This is a question a few people have asked us recently. Shall we start with a quick overview of what TikTok is….
TikTok is a social media platform (created by the Chinese company ByteDance), it is a bit like a cross between Instagram and YouTube. Users set up a profile and other users can view their content and follow them (it is not a reciprocal relationship like Facebook). The content shared must be video and it can only last between 3 seconds and 1 minute. Most of the content is comedy, dance and music related, but since its useage has grown users have started to add more educational content too.
So now we come to the question of whether your business should be on TikTok and this really comes down to demographics.
41% of TikTok users are between the age of 16 and 24
TikTok has 800 million active users, however about 80% of those are in China.
So I guess the quick answer is that if your target audience are not Chinese people between the ages of 16 and 24 then you don’t need to be on TikTok. More seriously though it is a platform which is vastly more popular with a very young audience and even with that audience it is only really an effective marketing tool for a product (rather than a service) which is available online (and therefore Nationally or Globally).
Worth keeping an eye on though as in the last 18 months adult TikTok useage has grown by 5 times.