TikTok for beginners: the lessons I’ve learned so far.
“Why are you obsessed with me?” That’s how the sound snipped I used for my first TikTok video starts. And that’s also what I had wondered about the 690 million TikTok users out there. Why are they so obsessed with this app? With dancing along to random songs, accepting weird challenges and sharing their most private moments with complete strangers? Well, there was only one way to find out. And guess what: you can now find me on TikTok.
The app had been waiting on my phone for over a year before I actually started using it recently. Initially, I had only downloaded it for research purposes, and basically that’s also why I finally became a TikToker. Out of curiosity, mostly. I wanted to crack the application and understand the thrill of it. Additionally, I wanted to get a better idea of how it can become part of a social media strategy in Marketing and Communications, as that had really been a black box to me until then.
Okay, maybe my entire cluelessness had a good reason: I’m a Millennial while TikTok is most popular with Gen Z. But aren’t those generations just numbers, anyway? TikTok’s core users are aged 16–24, while I am 28 years old. So I’m almost young enough to like it. Almost. As a Digital Native, I’ve already gone through quite a few hype cycles in terms of social media. For me, it all started with the German platform “SchuelerVZ”, which I really liked a whole lot for a whole while. Then, I became super fascinated with Facebook. Then Instagram. I gave Snapchat a try, I am using LinkedIn and Xing, I run this blog here on Medium and another one on WordPress. And recently, I also explored Clubhouse for some time.
As I love communications in all of its aspects, I’ve always loved exploring new social platforms, too. In my portrait in our high school year book from 2012, somebody described me as a guy who “posts stuff on Facebook faster than you can speak” and I was also ranked amongst the most obsessed with social media (I wouldn’t call it an obsession, really…). So why not add another social media channel to the list? Especially one that looks so fun and creative? That’s what I thought to myself and that’s why my TikTok premiere finally happened a few days ago:
You could probably describe me as a “late bloomer” in terms of TikTok. If ever there had been such a thing as THE perfect moment to give it a try, the start of the pandemic last year would have been it. That’s when the number of downloads of the app skyrocketed, and that’s also when I saw some friends of mine trying it out and sharing their first steps on TikTok in their Instagram stories. Well, it took me a little while longer. And to be honest, *SPOILER ALERT* I’m not sure for how long my (not so big of a) career as a TikToker will last. Even though I have to admit, it IS kind of addictive.
Usually, the videos you create on the app are 15 to 30 seconds long. Or short, depending on how you see it. However, TikTok recently added the option of recording videos of up to 3 minutes. And you can also host live streams, of course. But what do all of those videos show? Well, I’m still trying to figure that out. A good indicator could be the content the most popular TikTokers create, so I started looking into the biggest TikTok influencers. I had already heard about Charli D’Amelio before, for instance, so I decided to become one of her 117 million (!!!) followers. She looks good, which is probably helpful. She is dancing a lot. And she has TONS of deals with brands going. Charli has her own coffee blend at Dunkin Donuts, her own collection with Hollister, promotes the chips brand Takis, the skin care brand Cerave and a whole lot of other brands, too. Ah, and she and her family will soon have their own show on hulu, of course. They seem to be the new Kardashians, really.
Well, I probably can’t compete with that. But I thus learned that TikTok is centered around pop culture, and that it is actually a part of it, too. No surprises there. Musicians get big through TikTok (remember Doja Cat’s “Say so”?) and brands also use that for their purposes. Creating their own Hip Hop tunes has become increasingly popular with advertisers anyways, and TikTok is adding even more fuel to that fire. Last year, I learned about the case of e.l.f. Cosmetics which had created a viral hit song for TikTok, back in 2019…and I couldn’t stop listening to that song for weeks after hearing it for the first time!
Let me seem them lips (mwah)
Attitude and gimme bass (boom, boom, boom)
Eyes, lips, face, wait!
For brands, it pays out to be on TikTok, as it seems. And they keep adding more and more options for brands to use TikTok as a platform for their advertising, too. Advertising that’s fun and engaging to TikTok users, so they start creating branded content without evening really noticing they are. While I’m writing this article, “#FordWatchMe” is trending and the videos users have created using Ford’s hashtag, sound and filters have been viewed more than 880 million times (update three days later: 1.3 billion times!), already. Way to go!
My own videos are far less popular, of course. I don’t know how to build a reach on TikTok, yet. I’m using popular hashtags and sound snippets, try to get inspired by what others do and still see it as a big playground. A really time consuming playground, however. The second video I posted is 13 seconds long, and the editing process for it took me more than 30 minutes. I’m not so sure if that’s a good ratio. But it’s fun! There are so many filters and sounds and options to explore and I even started recording videos where you hear me speak, which I had always thought as rather useless before. Because who would want to listen to that? It feels like a great learning experience, though, and who knows what those skills can be useful for at some point.
I have created six videos so far, of me “dancing” (cf. the video I posted above), walking around the streets, cooking and going out with friends. My friends were a little annoyed when I filmed everything that night, and walking around the streets filming felt odd, too. My videos have been viewed about 2,200 times by now, by God knows whom, and I don’t really know yet why I’m doing all of this. Most of my friends are not on TikTok, so I cannot even interact with them there. But with 690 million other people. And that’s already not too bad of a starting point, I’d say.
