A User's Guide to TikTok

4 min readJul 12, 2019

What is TikTok?

TikTok is a social media platform that when at first glance can look very chaotic and fast-pace. This app is a combination of Spotify, Snapchat, Vine, and Twitch. You can make your videos 6 seconds long like Vine, or go live like you can on Twitch. You may also create Snapchat Videos and upload them to Tik Tok while adding a Spotify song of your choice.

The app revolves around sharing short videos where you can edit with many filters and stickers.

Not only is TikTok a big platform for advertising campaigns and sponsored content, but it is the biggest platform for some of the most popular memes.

Evolution

How To Use It

Step 1: Creating an Account

Like all social media, the first step after downloading the app is setting up your account. To set up your account you can either use your email, your phone number or a third-party platform like Facebook. After creating your account, you can choose any personalized nickname. You can also create a bio, give yourself a profile picture and also give yourself a profile video. By default, all Tik Tok profiles start out as public. To change this, you must manually go into your settings and adjust your privacy settings.

Step 2: Navigating Tik Tok

Congratulations on creating your account! Next step is learning to navigate through all of what TikTok has to offer. The app has two feeds. The default feed is generated just for you. Here you will find videos that follow your interests based off who you follow and what you have liked (very similar to the explore page on Instagram). While on the default feed, swipe left to access the other feed which are only videos from people you chose to follow.

On all videos, you have the option to like or comment. To like it, simply touch the heart. To comment, simply tap the three dots underneath the heart. You can also share the link to the video by pressing on the arrow. On all videos with music, you can tap a musical note icon to see what song was playing. If you do not like a video and never went to see it again, simply hard tap on the video where a dislike button will appear.

Step 3: Filming and Sharing

Now it’s time to start making and sharing your very own Tik Toks. Begin by pressing the plus sign at the bottom of the screen. This will then open up your camera where you have a lot of different options to choose from to customize and personalize your video. The options include: adding music, adding AR effects (similar to Snapchat), adding stickers, adding effects that work on your pets, adding a beatification filter (smooth skin and erases dark spots underneath your eyes) and lastly adding instagram like effects to the video as a whole.

After choosing what you want to include your video, it is now time to start recording. TikTok gives you two options for this. You can either manually record your video (like Snapchat), or you can use the timer feature to automatically record for you. You can do one continuous video or break it up into several different segments. You can also upload previously recorded videos and even split your screen into half and have two different videos play at the same time. Let your creativity shine! Once you have everything recorded, hit the next button. Here you will be able to add a caption and/or hashtag to your video. Once ready, click share. Congratulation, you have poster your very first TikTok!