TikTok came to life in 2016 as a cute teen app where kids shared hyper-relevant dance moves with other teens around the world. The platform has since skyrocketed and along the way it has faced many hurdles. From national bans in India to Trump’s intervention in the US, the app has been under attack from all angles, and ultimately misunderstood. Here I’ll bust 5 of the biggest myths. 

1. Data Mining is a big issue

First off, let’s take a look at the rumours of data mining and privacy violations. I’ll focus on the EU to keep it simple. 

Currently the UK, France, Holland, Italy and Denmark are probing TikTok’s parent company, Byte Dance, to figure out if they are violating the EU’s powerhouse regulation, GDPR. To keep the regulators away from the door, TikTok is building a €420 million data centre in Ireland to store UK and EU data. This seems to be the go-to move for all the big tech firms and we’ve seen it keep the advertising media platforms on the data-based straight and narrow. 

As TikTok takes this well blazed path of compliance, I’m confident ongoing data issues will be managed just like Facebook, Twitter and Google do, and the EU will keep a close eye on any violations. 

2. It’s all Teeny boppers

On a lighter note, let’s talk about the kids dancing! If you’ve ever opened the app, felt very old then found yourself in a two-hour rabbit hole of trying to understand the new wave of the internet, then you’re not alone. 

Though it’s taken a little time to draw in the grey hairs, the crowd is getting older. At the end of 2019 TikTok had seven million monthly active users (MAU) in the UK and though the age distribution did strongly favour users under 24, with 52% of users falling in that age band, it’s important to look at the other side where 48% of the overall usership is above 25 years old. A really important statistic is that 8% of all UK MAU were over 45+. That’s 560k users. 

The platform has seen incredible growth throughout 2020 with the COVID pandemic acting as a catalyst for user uptake and word has it, the largest crowd increase this year is TikTokers aged 30 upwards. It won’t be long until adult nappies and purple rinse hair dye will be viable advertisers for the platform. 

3. It’s the next Facebook

We’re entering the age of ‘TikTok and Chill’. Whilst working on the platform for the last 18 months, we’ve discovered that approaching the platform like a traditional social channel like Facebook or Instagram is totally the wrong approach and that when you’re creating content you should think ‘15 second Netflix shows’ rather than social post. 

Think ‘start, middle and end’ instead of ‘flash, pop, wow!’ There needs to be a story arc with a snappy intro and cliff hanger. The piece of content being created needs a character that takes a microsecond to understand and empathise with. For me, TikTok has been designed for scriptwriters with really short attention spans and a knack for compressing a story. 

4. You can control the audience 

TikTok is all about momentum. It’s a wave you can’t control, so don’t try. If you put content out there then don’t try to predict what will happen, and if people are talking about you, be part of the conversation not the controller of it. 

We recently saw Ocean Spray jump on to the viral video of a guy skateboarding to a Fleetwood Mac ‘Dreams’ and it was executed perfectly. They supported his content by getting Fleetwood Mac to take part, buying him a huge red truck and supplying him with Cranberry Juice to remove a lifetime of bladder infections. 

Another part to this is that for a lot of large brands, the conversation is already happening, and they are not part of it. Take Carlsberg for example; their hashtag has received 7.7m views and they don’t have an account. This isn’t rare and is applicable to a lot of household name brands, but to get onboard this platform and engage correctly with this chaotic audience brand managers need to rethink their strategy specifically for TikTok and ride the wave.