TikTok might just be the easiest way to gain followers on social media right now. If there is only ONE place you have time for social media marketing in 2021, it’s definitely TikTok (not sponsored, in case you’re wondering).
TikTok, known in China as Douyin, is a video-sharing social networking service owned by Chinese company ByteDance.
As a co-founder of a digital media company that primarily relied on Facebook as a source of traffic, we didn’t start running our TikTok account until early last year, and have only decided to put more effort into it these few months.
I recently posted a video on TikTok and to my amazement, I gained 100,000 new followers. It’s safe to say I have never encountered such a high increase of following in less than 48 hours. From where we started, it took us more than 3 years to gain a total of 5 million followers across our channels.
On TikTok, the sky is the limit. It gives you so much more opportunity with a whole new potential of reach. Facebook and Instagram businesses may have long bid goodbye to organic reach, especially if you were late to the game. That’s even more so why you should be on TikTok now.
Here’s the video that I posted.
A 65-year-old uncle selling RM1 iceball in George Town, Penang. I found this interesting dessert at our Penang Foodie Facebook group, special thanks to Casey Neo for sharing this.
At the time of writing, the video is at 19.9 million views and 1.8million love (reaction).
The video went viral, obviously. I am sharing some screenshots here for a clearer look at the process.
12:00 pm: The video is posted.
1:50 pm: The video gathered 333k views in approximately 2 hours.
Our number of followers at this time was 639.1k followers.
3:00 pm: Video reached 1.1m views.
Total number of followers: 643.8k followers.
3:51 pm: 2m views
649.3k followers
5:26 pm: 3.7m views
660.7k followers
24 hours later, the video has garnered 9.9m views and our TikTok account has 706.8k followers.
We gained 100,000 followers in 2 days!
‘It’s time to pay serious attention to TikTok’ — TechCrunch
Oberlo compiled 10 amazing stats about TikTok.
- TikTok has 800mil active users monthly.
- TikTok app has been downloaded over 2bil times on the App Store & Google Play store.
- TikTok is the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store
- TikTok App Conquers the Teens of the World, 41% of the TikTok users are aged between 16 and 24.
- TikTok was downloaded 3.09 mil times for the Google Play store in Brazil in September 2020.
- TikTok users spend an average 52 minutes per day on the app.
- TikTok is available in 155 countries.
- 90% of all TikTok users access the app on a daily basis.
- More than 1 bil videos viewed ever day in the last year.
- Growing Number of US Adults Use TikTok.
A quick screenshot of the Top Free Apps section on the Apple App Store shows that TikTok app is one of the most popular apps in Malaysia. It is ranked #8 on the Apple App Store currently.
There is no reason not to be on TikTok, after all, a phone is all you need to get started.
How This Video Went Viral
In my opinion, this video caught people’s attention with its story and it inlined with the current pandemic situation. A 65-year-old uncle wearing a mask while making RM1 ice ball. People resonate better with emotional contents, agree?
You can start with finding stories around you by using the 5W1H method.
5W1H is the abbreviation summarising the following six questions: What? Who? Where? When? Why? How? This method consists of asking a systematic set of questions to collect all the data necessary to draw up a report of the existing situation with the aim of identifying the true nature of the problem and describing the context precisely
Once you have a fully-fleshed picture of who you’re targeting, you can position content to create an emotional connection by writing what that customer wants to read. Start by treating content as branding, rather than sales. — Power Digital Marketing
Here are 3 things that you should do after reading this article if you want to score on social media
- Pick a niche based on your product or service.
- Post at least 1 video per day.
- Monitor videos that are performing, and keep posting videos that ‘work’.
