A bunch of Emory college students spent the final semester studying the artwork and the science of “going viral.”
Professor Marina Cooley, who teaches content material advertising and marketing at Goizueta Business School, tasked teams of scholars with creating viral video campaigns on the favored social media platform TikTok.
The finish product – a curated profile of relatable faculty movies – rapidly unfold throughout the Emory scholar physique and past. It took solely about two weeks earlier than most college students on campus had been conscious of and engaged with content material popping out of the “TikTok class.” By the time the semester was over, the account racked up a number of million likes and views.
Some of essentially the most “viral” movies included “Worst Majors to Date,” “Guessing Majors at College,” and a sequence of movies documenting the day within the lifetime of an Emory cat.
From a advertising and marketing perspective, the objective was for college students to discover ways to “achieve and retain a audience,” Cooley instructed Hypepotamus. That meant serving to college students perceive what makes an thought “sticky” on-line, the way to write a compelling headline, and what it takes to ship an audience-specific message in 30 seconds.
Teaching particularly to TikTok could sound area of interest, however it’s a part of maintaining with the trendy advertising and marketing panorama. That means understanding the way to market to shoppers utilizing hyper-realistic and short-form movies.
“This class was particularly designed for this yr, and for our technology, in a manner that no different class has,” added junior Maya Harris.
TikTok is now an important device for the trendy marketer. Not solely does the platform boast over one billion customers worldwide, it has develop into the go-to platform for influencer advertising and marketing and its advert income is about to hit $23.58 billion by 2024.
It’s additionally altering how startups take into consideration advertising and marketing.
Upwards of 225,000 manufacturers have an lively TikTok account, with 45% of these utilizing influencers to achieve new audiences on the platform.
There are definitely some startups on the platform that will probably be acquainted for Hypepotamus readers. Consumer manufacturers like Treleaf, newly-launched apps like Hatched, and late-stage startup Bark Technologies have been utilizing it to develop their digital advertising and marketing initiatives and their shopper base.
In the sports activities enviornment, each The Players’ Lounge and Press Sports have gathered a big on-line viewers of athletes and sports activities fanatics.
Even early-stage B2B startups are utilizing TikTok. Ohanafy, a Wilmington, North Carolina-based brewery software program platform, lately began utilizing it to achieve new markets in a enjoyable and fascinating manner.
“The flexibility of having the ability to share your movies on different platforms [makes] TikTok a particularly versatile platform that extends exterior of that platform alone,” mentioned Ohanafy’s co-founder Davis Bryson.
Offbeat Media Group’s Shep Ogden
TikTok even grew to become a shopper for Atlanta-based Offbeat Media Group. The social media big began working with Offbeat in 2018 after they had been seeking to drive new app downloads.
“With our deeper visibility because of the shopper relationship, we rapidly noticed TikTok changing into the platform that shifted tradition and began traits, and knew we needed to make investments into our personal content material on the platform. We’ve constructed success by producing content material the place consideration is shifting, which is why it was a precedence for us to get began,” Offbeat’s Shep Ogden instructed Hypepotamus.
Building The Right Content
For manufacturers, authenticity is on the core of TikTok content material improvement. But it requires manufacturers to be extremely on-top of the Tik Tok pattern lifecycle.
So how are manufacturers getting eyeballs on their feeds in the present day?
“Recently we’ve got seen Public Interviews or “Man on the Street” model content material do REALLY properly. We imagine this content material performs greatest due to the uncooked and genuine nature of it. It doesn’t really feel like an advert, and other people love seeing our creators react with random folks on the road,” mentioned Samay Devraj of Juiced, a Tik Tok administration firm. “The greatest content material engenders an emotional response, motivates motion, and fosters dialog.”
That rings true for Ogden and the Offbeat Media staff as properly.
“There are a variety of kinds of content material that do properly, however usually, we see movies that really feel low-budget (shot on iPhone) overperform. People like authenticity, and a high-budget social asset on TikTok isn’t that. Because of this, we plan our content material as if it was an everyday shoot, however when it’s time to movie, we guarantee it seems as if it might’ve been filmed spur of the second,” he added.
TikTok Reality Check
In current years, it’s develop into inconceivable to speak about TikTok with out acknowledging the controversies surrounding the platform and the potential affect it might have on manufacturers.
“Back in 2020 after I first began lecturing on TikTok…only a few manufacturers had been dipping their toe within the water. The ones that had been being closely rewarded,” Cooley added. “Little by little, manufacturers began to put money into the platform, get headcount towards it, get companies towards it. So after I’m educating the TikTok class now, there aren’t that many manufacturers that I can record which are nonetheless sitting out. And now we’ve received all of those manufacturers which have invested in understanding the platform and I’m certain a variety of them are pondering, was this a dangerous funding to make?”
Citing nationwide safety dangers and issues about its mother or father firm ByteDance, state authorities officers have spent the higher a part of the previous couple of months working to ban the platform from government-owned telephones and units. Potential additional bans are definitely on the minds of content material creators and content material shoppers throughout the US.
TikTok additionally faces different distinctive challenges – whereas it has the eyeballs, it hasn’t but discovered a option to compete on the monetization entrance, added Professor Cooley.
“It’s not like Instagram the place you click on and nearly have a seamless purchasing checkout. There’s nonetheless a variety of performance that TikTok has to determine with the intention to make it a seamless purchasing expertise,” Cooley instructed Hypepotamus.
But manufacturers actively utilizing TikTok for advertising and marketing and model improvement aren’t shifting technique simply but.
“TikTok as a platform has changed the sport. Almost each social platform has a vertical video feed at this level (Reels, Shorts, and so on). We’ve seen tradition occurs on TikTok. There isn’t a single different brief kind video platform that has tradition or trend-setting potential proper now. What works on TikTok will doubtless inform a lot of your advertising and marketing selections,” added Devraj. “We additionally imagine that if TikTok goes down tomorrow, our company enterprise gained’t be negatively impacted, as a result of each platform is working as quick as potential to be the subsequent TikTok and replicate the genius of their algorithm. The manufacturers who’re crushing it on TikTok will finally simply begin prioritizing the subsequent platform. We additionally strongly imagine that Twitter goes to lean closely into brief kind video quickly. We’ll be on the forefront of this tradition shift. Regardless of what occurs, brief kind vertical video is right here to remain, and Juiced will probably be right here to innovate.”
Ogden and Offbeat Media are additionally bullish on the platform transferring ahead.
“We have constructed our enterprise to leverage our learnings from TikTok on different platforms like YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and Snapchat…however we don’t foresee TikTok going anyplace. If something, it’ll be required to totally separate from the mother or father firm, ByteDance, however I don’t envision a future with out TikTok,” mentioned Ogden.
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