TIKTOK

Growing an account on social media these days is very difficult. We managed to build a following 10 years ago on Instagram but when it got hacked and we couldn’t get our company handle back we stopped putting in the effort there as we saw the platform become controlled by algorithms and paid advertisers and moved over to TikTok.

It’s very interesting to see TikTok advertising on TV for the first time this holiday season and the advert is marketing TikTok as a place to find recipes of all things. The lady with dementia being visited by her son who’s made an apple tarte tartine and the feel good vibes as the taste triggers her memory.

It’s interesting to me where they are trying to position themselves to a new audience.

I’ve had three goes at building an account and marketing on TikTok, the best I’ve managed regarding an kind of significant traffic and going viral was a very funny clip I managed to capture, a fluke which did get 100,000 views the rest I struggled to get over 1000.

I’ve followed a few TikTok strategy gurus, and done what they have recommended to the letter, the last post I made suggested posting a 7 second clip, any clip, didn’t matter, with the heading “If you are seeing this clip it’s a sign from the universe” there are a lot of lonely people out there and enduring tough times right now so I chose a clip with a massive love heart about CONNECTION, what this site is all about, I picked TIKTOK recommended music as suggested, the sales pitch from the guru was her student got 2.6 million views when they followed this tip, I normally get between 700-1000, for this post you can see I got 7 views. So you can see it hasn’t made a difference, if anything the engagement was worse following their tips than doing my own thing. You can see I posted two posts about snoopers rants and raves, both pretty much the same, the first one about CBD oil got 50 views, the second one about sunglasses I popped a picture of model Gigi Hadid over and that got 250 views, not ground breaking I realise but clearly people are five times more engaged by a model they recognise than a brown bottle of Hemp Heros.

I guess logically it would make sense if everyone is doing the same thing, following the same tips, presented to them by the TIKTOK algorithm, what TIKTOK wants users to do. TIKTOK’s job is to keep you engaged and hopeful, tap into your desire to go viral just like a dating app taps into your desire to fall in love and live happily ever after. However TIKTOK like Google can only show a certain number of accounts and ultimately chooses the accounts that best benefit them by delivering what the audience wants and keeps them swiping and engaged. Like the top spots on Google’s first page, there are only a few and of course they go to the people that pay the most, unless you have managed to build something over time, like here on Poopsnoop, all original community moderated content the search engines love.

In a world of AI generated content and everyone doing the same thing, following the same strategies, listening to the same few people for a handful of top spots it’s obvious it’s not going to work.

The only way you are going to break through is by doing the work, being consistent, having a great product, message that people want to buy, listen to, or get something from.

If you enjoy your time on TikTok, connecting with others and find it rewarding and pleasurable then why not but if you are looking to it to save your business or really grow your reach for free I think that’s is unlikely to happen based on my experience.

There are so many posts on TikTok saying something like, I’ve been on TIKTOK for a year, posting regularly and this is what I’ve learnt.

Why I thought it would be a good title for a snoop.