If we talk about the top trending application, everyone should have heard of TikTok. People can make a short VDO clip with this app. From Sensor Tower's report, it is the highest download count (except Games) in May 2020 alone, with 111.9 million downloads, which is double when compared to Zoom and Whatsapp, respectively, in 2019. The popularity of TikTok is not just a coincidence. It has mesmerized Mark Zuckerberg and he has kept his eyes on this Chinese application. Let’s get to know more about this application.

From China’s Startup to World’s Most Valued Application

TikTok is the name that is known among people around the world but it is actually originated from China, called Douyin. It is difficult for international users to recognize Chinese names so they changed it to TikTok. The application was developed by ByteDance, launched in 2018, and currently has 700 million active users per day. The business has valued at approximately $ 75 billion (about 2.4 trillion baht) and it is also the world's most valued startup application. It was then invested by SoftBank, a Japanese IT company, and the application's main target audience is teenagers aged between 16-24. Although initially TikTok primarily focused on the teenage market in Asia, a recent report from Qustodio (an app that helps parents control their children's online behavior) has surveyed about 60,000 households in the United States, UK, and Spain. They found that from February 2019 to April 2020 American children spent an average of 95 minutes on TikTok per day which second only to YouTube at an average of 99 minutes per day. Tiktok is very popular among children in these three countries. Americans spend 82 minutes which increases to 116%; UK's spend 69 minutes which increases to 97%; Spain spends 60 minutes which increases to 150%. It is undeniable that TikTok has become very popular among Gen Z right now.

How to do marketing on Gen Z?

In the beginning, TikTok targeted Gen Z by choosing influencers who have good-looking and glamorous lifestyles to attract new users to follow and re-shares. They also invited influencers, who are popular in the application, to help promote as well. They spend more than 10 billion RMB to use 1,000 selected influencers to increase their number of followers up to 1,000,000 each which will give TikTok a total number of followers to reach 1 billion. After TikTok has gained massive influencers, they joined hands with partners to promote their products by using influencers to make VDO clips for people to follow and re-create. For example, Hai Di Lao hot pot restaurant invented new menus to join this campaign. This strategy worked, as a result, they have got massive sales from this campaign. In addition, the app's strength lies in the development of an easy-to-use user interface. There are features such as effects, filters, templates, adjust speed, compose sound, and add background music. It is very easy to create VDO clip and doesn’t require any skills. With a clever marketing strategy, less than a year after it was launched, it has reached 100 million users, which is one of the biggest TikTok's successes.

Tiktok’s Algorithm

People who are familiar with Facebook will know that in order to get more likes and engagement, in addition to the conventional method, you have to buy ads to make your page more visible to users. But it is different for Tiktok, a number of followers do not affect the engagement. It depends on how popular your VDO clip is, the more likes you got the more it become visible to users. For example, when someone uploads a new VDO, the system will only show to some users, based on various engagement histories, whether they would be interested in this or not. Then the system will see if people is actually watching, like, comment, and share. Then it will take into account whether this clip should be shown to more people or not. That means if you do very good content, chances that the system will show it to more people is possible. The system will track that out of 10 people who see the VDO will give 1 like and if within 1-day people like more than 40% of the total number of views the VDO clip will be spread out to a wider audience. It can be said that you don't need a lot of followers, but make good content and get likes. The chances that the VDO will become viral with millions of views is possible overnight, unlike Facebook or Youtube which you must have a large number of fans or subscribers to have a greater chance of seeing.

How to become Tiktok’s rising star

To become Tiktok’s rising star isn’t difficult, just follow the aforementioned and create interesting content and follow these rules.

• Show your skills to the world. You have to ask yourself what skills you have. Do you have any special skills such as language, cooking, exercise, specific knowledge, or brain teaser, etc? What if you really don't have it? Try to use your craziness to cover a hit song. It can be fun or even completely unconventional. Because clips that are popular are often unique. Importantly, the main app users are Gen Z, who like fun, comedy, entertaining clips would have a higher chance of becoming popular than educational or useful clips. Above all, you should be yourself as much as possible. It is a selling point that will make people interest and follow.
  
• Make people feel that they want to participate. For example, by challenging the audience to feel wanting to imitate and wanting to challenge their friends, siblings, and fans which it can cause viral. For example, the clip of Som Yut of Mae Sitang.
  
• Choose a popular soundtrack for the video. You can browse through TikTok’s selected in the ‘Discover’. It can increase the chances that the clip will be recommended to other users on the “For You” page, it will make the clip more visible. For example, the cover of Super Valentine's song Jane-Nun-Bow became trendy and people recover.
  
• Choose effects to create videos that are trending from the ‘Hot’ menu, it gives more chances that your clips will be engaged by many users.
  
• Include ‘#’ (Trending Hashtag) when writing titles or descriptions. Find hashtags that are trending in ‘Discover’ so you'll be more likely to be seen. Not all hashtags are popular. It must be relevant to the content because TikTok’s system will check the appropriateness before posting on to the platform. Before making a clip, you can try to find out which hashtags are trending in which could be viewed by many users. You can use it as an idea to continue creating content. This will help content to be related to hashtags, to go viral, and reach more viewers.

References

https://ahead.asia/2020/06/08/us-uk-spain-kids-watch-tiktok-as-much-as-youtube/

https://www.billionmindset.com/tik-tok-going-rocket/

https://stepstraining.co/social/how-to-be-famous-video-creator-in-tiktok

https://www.thumbsup.in.th/sommark-creater-tik-tok

https://www.everydaymarketing.co/trend-insight/tiktok-strategy-from-local-social-media-to-global-social-media/