To Tik? or Tok?

Let's start out with the obvious: know your audience. That being said - TikTok has been absolutely shredding it the last few years on the social media side. And its super easy to lump TikTok in as the next Instagram, Snapchat, WeChat whatever but that's selling this unique platform and your social media strategy short.

First - let's define social media somewhat. To me, social media is broadcasting your individual ideas, thoughts, and media to a group of friends or likeminded individuals online. Every social media platform creates its own style of this through its given parameters - ie. Twitter - short sentences and lots of panicking, Facebook - checking to see if your grandparents and sheltered cousins are still alive, Instagram to remember you look terrible in swimwear, and LinkedIn to remember that guy you worked with two jobs ago is still kinda sucks.

Now, lets think about YouTube. Do you consider it social media? Technically...it can be, but for 99% of the real world, its what we watch when we think we need a break after replying to 4 emails in a row (trust me, its exhausting). It's curated to your interests, just like social media, which is why an hour can go by in an instant, but you're not...really interacting beyond the comments. So, its more...socially driven entertainment.

Which brings me to TikTok - I liken it to Youtube reshuffled into an Instagram format. By autoplaying the videos as you scroll, your much more likely to absorb a good 3-5 seconds to gauge your interest (trust me, their listening too :P), its much more addictive than youtube and delivers for the most part, socially driven entertainment that you will enjoy. The interaction is you watching, commenting, and sharing. In the grand scope of things it still is early days as a platform so we are still heavily reliant on actual content creators to keep us busy on the platform - time will tell if it's something we do as organically as share pictures, tweets, or sad lyrics from 90's songs that you defiantly should have kept to yourself. My thought is....probably not, but we'll see.

The point of this ramble is as a company that wants to expand into social media should you make the jump into TikTok? That depends. Is your audience a younger skewed demographic that tends to react well to story driven content? If so then absolutely! Jump in, see what works, drop what doesn't and have a blast. Not so much? Hey, there is plenty of bank to be made on Facebook and LinkedIn - and absolutely no shame in it. Just because it's new and shiny doesn't mean you have to jump in blind. Unless your audience does - if so, then suit up - the water's fine ;)