These days, if an emerging brand wants to thrive they need to navigate the ever-expanding world of apps. Each app is a new window to an untapped audience just waiting to be engaged by your brand. And as 2020 unfolds, there’s a new app on the block to join the ranks of Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat: from Chipotle to the Washington Post, more and more brands are leveraging TikTok to spike engagement and sales.
Why TikTok Matters
If you still don’t know exactly what TikTok is, here is your very brief tutorial: it’s a video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance launched in 2017 for iOS and Android for markets outside of China. People primarily use it to create short lip-sync, comedy, and talent videos –– of 3 to 15 seconds, and short looping videos of 3 to 60 seconds –– which is ideal for creating extremely cost-effective marketing content.
TikTok also employs artificial intelligence to analyze users’ interests and preferences through their interactions with the content, and displays a personalized content feed to each user. Additionally, brands can include links and commerce URLs in their profiles and videos. So not only is the organic reach on the platform huge, but you can also drive meaningful traffic to your website.
Just how much traffic are we talking about? TikTok was the most downloaded app in the US in October 2018, the first Chinese app to achieve this. As of 2018, it’s available in over 150 markets and in 75 languages. In February 2019, TikTok hit one billion downloads globally (excluding Android installs in China). In 2019, TikTok was announced to be the 7th most downloaded mobile app of the decade, from 2010 to 2019. In fact, TikTok has 500 million active users worldwide according to Datareportal. That makes TikTok 9th in terms of social network sites, ahead of better known platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat. Are you beginning to see the potential?
