Not long ago, maybe about 6 to 7 years back, whenever you reached out your hand to grab your phone, the first thing that might interest you is the blue ‘F’ symbol which is like calling you to click on it. 

Then, fast forward to 2 to 3 years later, the camera rainbow lookalike logo takes over your sensation to scroll on your phone. You’re so eager to click on it, just to scroll down photos of people that you might know or don’t know. 

Next, your life seems to be shifted a bit. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, you are now searching for something more interesting. Something moving, alive, short and sweet and not taking a lot of your time. You only need a few seconds or less than 1 to 2 minutes of stories that you wish to discover before you go for the next.

The musical clef treble black and white logo now has grabbed your interest whenever you unlock your smartphone screen. Tiktok, one of the social media platforms which has been the main topic of the youth. And it caters majority of the social media users around the world right now, Tiktok has taken over the social media industry. Reading along, you will discover the secrets of how Tiktok could amazingly become the No. 1 in the social media industry.

Good Content

At first, you might see most people in Tiktok, are dancing or doing something stupid, just for fun or to be viralled over the Internet. But, as the number of users (not only the content creators but the viewers too) are increasing, a lot more creative and beneficial contents have been uploaded onto Tiktok. 

People are still sharing their daily life stories, of dancing, laughing, doing stupid thing, but you could also find amazing content creators which did deeper research in creating and uploading their contents into Tiktok. There are psychologists that share tips for maintaining good mental health or artists who share how they put their hand-made arts on the canvas in Tiktok. 

You can find doctors, engineers, teachers, book lovers sharing their expertise, tips and tricks. Tailors and designers showing how they’re prepping the sewing process of all the designed clothes. Even the typical lawn mowers that creatively cut the grass at the pedestrian roadside and showing the ‘before and after’ of the scenes. 

Some of you might think this is not new. Youtube has done it. And in fact, quite plenty of similar videos that you can find in Youtube, have been cut off, shortened and uploaded into Tiktok. But the feeling is different now, since you don’t have to skip any part of the videos (like you usually did in Youtube). You will only watch (or served with) part of the videos that is important for the user to watch, without the need of skipping it, because it is too short to skip. You can only find videos with duration from 15 seconds to 10 minutes in Tiktok. 

Short & Sweet Sensation

The viewers of Tiktok are now becoming larger and come from various demographics. Not just youth users, ages ranging from 12 to 20 years old, like during the early days of Tiktok; but the grandpas and grandmas most probably are using Tiktok right now, just to watch videos about refurbishing an old house or cooking an old 1920s dinner recipe.

So, as people are more likely to click on Tiktok logo, rather than Facebook, Instagram or even Twitter, business owners, social influencers or the key opinion leaders (KOL) will take this as the new opportunity. Since you can only share a short video into Tiktok, the marketing technique that is used in Tiktok is more into limiting drop technique. “If you want to know more, visit our Youtube channel”, or “click in the bio to visit our official website, to know more about our products.”

The limiting time of Tiktok videos gives the sensation to the viewers and hence increasing the customer stickiness, towards the Tiktok accounts – its business as well as the related products.

Algorithm

Another interesting part of Tiktok is its algorithm. While you can understand that each social media platform like Facebook, Instagram and Youtube is using a certain algorithm to curate all the datas that they have; you are only able to see videos that are related to your preference. Algorithms in Tiktok are pretty much the same, but yet much more interesting. 

In Tiktok, there is a term called ‘For Your Page’ or ‘FYP’. This represents the feed page of your Tiktok account, in other words, the homepage. You are able to see all popular videos uploaded from around the world in that area. And surprisingly, the FYP is organized not only according to the popularity of the content creators, or number of people viewing the videos or even number of likes of the videos. It is quite random actually. You may see millions of viewers’ videos on your FYP, but you also still can see videos with maybe around 200 viewers on it too. 

Some of the videos appearing on your FYP, might be a one-time wonder video where the content creator has never predicted that the video could become viral or even be viewed by millions of people. 

The lack of biases in Tiktok gives the viewers the feeling that we are all the same. We’re not public figures who have a lot of money to put up ads or pay large amounts of money to make our videos sit on the top page. We’re just parents who like to record videos of us picking up our kids from school, or a fisherman who loves to cook for his family every weekend. 

So, with those humane feelings, rather than bot algorithm feelings, Tiktok successfully breaks the serious wall. AI robotic and marketing oriented which is usually synonymous with social media platforms, no longer become a major issue while you are scrolling in Tiktok.

Fast

With the short duration of Tiktok videos, people tend to share a lot more Tiktok videos compared to other social media platform’s videos. As the videos will take only 15 seconds of your time, you don’t mind watching and sharing it over Whatsapp, or watching it in between your office emails or even while you’re waiting for your food in the restaurant. It wouldn’t be taking much of your time as well as your internet data. 

Due to the above reason, the volume of Tiktok videos being shared among the community will be even greater, faster and easier. This is a very good factor for digital marketers to promote the business, products and events. As the typical reading rules where we only have 3 seconds to grab people’s attention to read our articles, Tiktok is able to hook people to watch more of its videos and to know more about the promoted products within that 15 seconds video duration.

Conclusion

Tiktok was created in China by Tencent, one of the largest gaming companies in the world. Some of you might think they’re using their creativity in gaming to attract people to switch to Tiktok from other social media. But to be true, people are now becoming more and more picky in selecting their favorite videos to watch. Yes, they do sometimes watch something funny, but it must not only be. The videos must be funny, entertained enough, or maybe knowledgeable enough or creative enough so that people won’t be bored watching it over and over again. 

Tiktok has elevated the making video industry into becoming more real-life and not a staged or acted up video like you can maybe see in other social media platforms. A low quality video like Khaby Lame’s can sometimes hook viewers to watch, rather than a high quality 4K video, as long as the content is good and high quality – more realistic, more real people, more real life.