Tik Tok is surging social network ecology — the brand-new interaction among the 00s generations
Tik Tok(Chinese: 抖音) is the app which provide users a platform to share their short music videos.
In 2018, it made a breakthrough in social network market. According to Sensor Tower’s statistics, Tik Tok was officially downloaded by 4.58 millions time in iOS, surpassing YouTube, Whatsapp and related apps by far in Q1. It was without a doubt an innovative and popular app with power.
Tik Tok was launch in Sep, 2016. and established its own social network system. People chose a music as the background and did whatever they want in 15 seconds, then post it in personal home page. How the common way in social networking could challenge the apps of the moment like Facebook, Instagram and so on, even defeated them? We discuss with 3 aspects — in Marketing, in Techniques and in Customers’ behavior.
#Marketing — Incentive was the key to your mind
In the beginning, users could choose and follow the music to disguise they were singing the song, then shared with friends. This simple thing ignited a lot of users’ imitation. Gradually, the app spawned as viral trends and attracted more users into the big social system.
To efficiently get higher users growth, Tik Tok started to raise internet celebrity to reinforce the power in social network. It selected Weibo(Chinese:微博) as the first marketing platform and let them shared their video in Tik Tok logo. In addition, they also unveil how the video produced to allure audiences to imitate it. More and more similar videos spread to other apps, giving rise to many series of short videos, Tik Tok finally occupied many peoples’ eyes by its obvious identity and grabbed them into the social ecosystem.
In the end, the other social apps (like Weibo, Tudou) were the stepping stones for Tik Tok to penetrate the market. In 2017, the growth of users who were immersed in short videos networking was 117%, Tik Tok was the winner to scale the market.
#Techniques — AI always knew what you like
There were so many app of relevant to short video, such as Kuaishou(Chinese:快手) and Meipai(Chinese:美拍). What was the key factor had users addict to Tik Tok? The AI technology application was playing a big role in it.
AI and the users were learning with one another. It knew what kind of the videos would be kindle users’ interest by “like” or “follow” responses of certain videos. Through the feedback from customers, AI could offer more similar short videos randomly to catch their eye. By the time users pulled away from Tik Tok temporally, several hours had elapsed. Briefly, Tik Tok approximately understood you by every time you clicked.
“A lot of our technology is actually language-independent,” Ma Weiying, head of Toutiao’s AI Lab
— quoted from TECHINASIA
(https://www.techinasia.com/bytedance-overseas-expansion-strategy-break-down)
Localization was an important thing for apps operation sustainability. However, if it attempted to expand the service to international market, flexibility was another necessary base on transnational strategy. That was, your service shall be varied with different culture and accurately seized users’ mind. Facebook and YouTube were the representative of that core marketing thinking.
Tik Tok launched “#gagadancemachine”(Chinese: 尬舞機), which was AI could recognize users’ motion and interacted, as a series of videos stream in Asia. Some innovators in the market recorded videos and shared in Facebook or Instagram with their friends. By the time this series got adequate active users, it would release another series to make users enjoy more interesting scenarios. Keeping users’ excitement was the core marketing strategy, those who shared the videos in social network were its powerful AD broadcaster. From then on, Tik Tok was like tsunami surged Asia market, especially in Japan and Thailand.
#Customers’ behaviors: Everyone pursued self-identity
Most of users of Tik Tok were 00’s generation. They were inclined to show themselves in social media. The special effect and series of video streams fascinated them. On the other words, it provided users several solutions to their needs.
The platform operated with AI technology. If someone started to copy a video set pattern, it would be showed in that community. Despite there was a newbie firstly sharing your creativity, it still easily got numerous people views in the short time. Tik Tok caught users’ desire for "performing” in such way as establish more and more individual video communities. 00’s generation was enchanted by this pattern.
Social networking was not only for satisfy interpersonal interaction, but also a platform presented someone’s self style. Thus, different from other social app, Tik Tok had to turn its active users into something valuable. That was cashability.
Social networking means a way to cashability
As the Internet becomes more and more common, marketing performance is determined by your customers’ value. Take live stream trend for example, a internet celebrity can start her live stream program anytime and attempt to influence her fans with personal charisma.
According to Reuters report in 2016, about 57% people received information from social media and 52% people watched videos online everyday, that was to say, traditional marketing tools could do less effect to people.
People are willing to take a glance on creative and interesting video. Live stream may be a way to facilitate, but it can’t ensure most users will join on time. Therefore, randomly video pushing by AI is another strategy to carry out. Tik Tok has billions of users, representing tremendous market scale to realize cashability in its own ecosystem. Comparing other apps, its rise and huge community power both establish the special e-commerce platform.
Content quality is the important item for positive operation
Everyone can easily be a internet celebrity, in other words, someone may show something illegal or filthy to attract peoples’ view in the short time. Owing to videos in Tik Tok tend to be entertaining, the brand image is difficult to escalate. Provided that a company makes service differentiation, Tik Tok may not pull itself away the brand stereotype.
Tencent re-supports to Weishi (Chinese: 微視) and brings a lot of auxiliary services in to challenge all the opponents in short video market. Kuaishou ,Hypstar do reset the marketing strategy to ameliorate users’ experience. The main disadvantage of Tik Tok is the brand position. Effectively managing the content post in the platform and thinking how to escalate brand position are thee important topics.
Cashability means performance, eliminate old-fashioned marketing thinkings
A lot of companies keep thinking of innovative ways on cashability in social marketing. Traditional AD spam will be abhorred by 00’s generation, even de-escalate brand impression. In 5 years, cashability will be the marketing performance thought highly instead of fans number, people viewed or the time stayed. Critical point is abandon out-of-date marketing thinking. The winner is always who foresees the trend and takes correct action with up-to-date marketing thinking.
