By now you’ve probably heard about TikTok, the short-form video app with more than a billion downloads worldwide and over 500 million active users. Launched in China in 2016, it entered the U.K. and U.S. markets in 2018. Currently it supports 15 languages and users in at least 75 countries. According to Google Trends, interest in TikTok as a search term peaked this summer in both the United States and the U.K., and worldwide in April 2019.
As social media becomes more and more fragmented, social intelligence professionals need to expand their sources and methodology—potentially even before some of the enterprise software platforms do. As one of the newest social networks to gain mass adoption, TikTok is ripe for social listening and understanding how to better engage with your students. Social intelligence professionals must lead the way in developing methodology for this new data source. I think it’s time we pay attention to TikTok.
Currently, users can search TikToks via the Discover feature. The default search behavior is trending hashtags, similar to Twitter, and the desktop version only supports hashtags. The app supports keyword search and you can find terms in users, videos, and sounds. It appears that keywords mainly query the text description of videos, but early testing I’ve completed indicates that context and potentially comments are also searchable. The app also supports autocomplete searches—a method of intelligence gathering in its own right.
Consumers of social intelligence across industries will have many uses for social intelligence from TikTok, particularly influencer marketing and market research.
Identifying influencers on key topics will prove valuable for many brands. Makeup is a hot topic (particularly in cosplay and gender nonconforming applications—both growth verticals), and brands like Estée Lauder are dedicating up to 75 percent of their marketing budgets to digital social media influencers. Brands will find these influencers on TikTok, if they’re not already, and social intelligence supports that. At Campus Sonar, we work mainly with the higher education sector and identified student TikTok influencers in the accessibility/ASL community, audio engineering, and gender queer issues. Other industries where there are likely already opportunities on TikTok include pet care, apparel, food and beverage, and lifestyle.
There is a lot the social listening industry doesn’t know about TikTok yet, but as innovative insight professionals we need to investigate. I know the Campus Sonar team will dive into TikTok this fall. Working with emerging datasets isn’t easy, and no one has created a manual. But there is immense value in understanding the zeitgeist of consumers, and right now that’s TikTok. The fact that no one is doing this at scale makes it a worthwhile opportunity.