Early this year, TikTok experienced massive updates to keep itself competitive with other social media platforms. To help you understand what exactly has changed, we’ve compiled all of its updates from the first three months of 2022 in one convenient – but long – article!
Credit: TechCrunch
The Repost Option
Ever wanted to share a TikTok that resonated with you? Well, you might be able to soon! As of January 2022, the platform began giving limited users the ability to repost content for the first time to test the concept.
Right now, the platform’s current model only reposts content to the ‘For You’ feed that can be seen only by friends/followers — which is in contrast to features like the Retweet, where content goes directly to your main feed.
Additionally, the only content that can be reposted are from the ‘For You’ feed, which is dictated by the TikTok algorithm; in other words, you can’t repost content shared or uploaded by friends or content found directly on the discovery feed.
You might ask: why doesn’t TikTok fully commit to the repost function? Well, the reason is likely that it’s concerned about the possibility of barraging its users with content if reposting is allowed without constraints. As it stands, TikTok’s trying to find the balance between giving users the opportunity to share material and content overload. I’ll monitor any developments surrounding the TikTok repost feature closely and report future changes.
Changes to Story Feature
TikTok announced big changes to its Stories function this January! In this update, the Story feature moves from being solely viewable by followers directly on your account to the public ‘For You’ page.
These posts are now viewable in tandem with normal posts on the TikTok main page, and will be differentiated with a ‘Quick’ tag appearing on Story posts. They can be created by clicking on the ‘+’ button, in contrast to the sidebar for normal posts.
Who Viewed Your Profile?
Previously, it was impossible to know who viewed your TikTok account, but thanks to a recent update, however, that’s no longer the case!
Taking inspiration from LinkedIn, TikTok now allows users to see who has viewed their profile in the past 30 days. There is a catch though – only users who mutually have Profile View History turned on will appear on the list. This feature can be toggled with the eye icon on your profile page.
Ten Minute Uploads
TikTok began with 15 second videos, which grew in length to one minute in 2017, and by July 2021, the maximum length of a TikTok became three minutes. Now, TikTok is exploring the possibility of increasing this maximum upload length once again: to ten minutes!
This experimentation is a part of the platform’s attempts to stay relevant and potentially attract users who are interested in long-form video content, whether as creators or viewers. It might also be a good way to maintain TikTok’s relevance in the constantly shifting dynamics of social media.
But it must be asked – even if they can do it, should they? And how will it impact users’ experiences on the platform? For now, all we can do is wait and see.
Credit: TikTok
Schedule Your TikToks
For people on the go, this TikTok update is perfect for you!
Users can now schedule their content anywhere from 15 minutes to ten days in advance through the web upload page. However, once the post is scheduled, it can be viewed on both the web and mobile versions of the app.
This development means that you won’t have to worry about setting reminders to post or using third party scheduling programmes. All you need to do is block some time in your day or week to schedule all your content and then just sit back and relax.
It’s only available for those with a Business Account or Creator Account, so consider switching over to take advantage of this useful feature. Plus, you’ll be able to access other things like analytics that will help you optimize your videos and when to post them.
TikTok Reveals Brand Campaign Data
Ever wondered if brands that partner with creators really have more successful campaigns than those that don’t work with them? After examining over 2,800 brand campaigns early this year, the platform released a new report that highlighted the positive impact of those collaborations.
A key result is that Ad Recall for any brands that work with creators on TikTok specific content is 27%, compared to only 19% without creators — that’s a 42% increase in success! Additionally, six second views increased by 91% compared to non-creator partnerships.
This reconfirms that partnering with a creator who has a strong presence on the platform allows brands to reach various communities in an effective and organic way. This often results in higher sales or referrals since there’s an element of trust on the part of followers that the creators are endorsing brands they personally believe in.
Curious to find out more? You can access the full report here
Bytedance Platform Glitch
Established TikTok content creators over 18 years old who have more than 10,000 followers and 100,000 cumulative views over the past 30 days are qualified to earn compensation for their content. However, a glitch experienced by parent company Bytedance Ltd., resulted in many new members being unable to sign up to the programme in February and thus, were unable to earn any compensation for their content creation.
This situation opens a more serious discussion about TikTok’s model for compensating leading content creators. As of February 2022, TikTok’s compensation fund is 200 million per year, which may sound like a lot of money, but compared to other social media platforms, it’s actually pretty low. TikTok’s trying to further build brand loyalty with its recent announcement that it’s growing the fund to one billion dollars, however, it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to other platforms, such as YouTube’s ten billion dollars compensation fund for its content creators.
Will TikTok be able to catch up? And once it grows its fund amount to a serious amount, how will that allow it to compete with more establish platforms? We’re going to keep an eye out to see how it plays out, especially if there’s another glitch that may result in a bigger uproar among TikTok’s content creators.
Organize Your Favorites
Previously, there was no way of sorting TikToks in your favorites collection. All favorite clips would go to the same folder, which if used frequently can easily become overwhelming. Thankfully with this new update, managing your favorites will become much easier.
You will now be able to sort your favorite TikToks with the new collections feature. Collections will work like namable folders that help you sort your favorite TikToks by topic. This way, you will be able to navigate through your favorite clips with ease.
Private Dislike Button
Ever faced a frustrating comment but didn’t feel like it was bad enough to report? For situations like this, TikTok is rolling out trials for a new feature that will bolster community moderation: the dislike button.
The dislike button will be used to flag comments that are irrelevant or inappropriate for a clip. These dislikes will not be public, and the commenters who are having their messages disliked will not receive notifications.
Additionally, it’s important to make the distinction between disliking a comment and reporting it. Disliking should be done when comments are irrelevant or inappropriate to a clip but do not break community guidelines. Reporting a comment, however, should be done when community guidelines are broken with more serious cases of harassment/abuse.
As of April 13, some regions have begun trialing this feature, and we’ll update you as the dislike button makes its way completely onto TikTok.
TikTok Digital Marketing Statistics
Early this April, TikTok released a report highlighting some data it has collected regarding the app’s demographics and digital marketing potential. While the entire report can be viewed here, we will summarize some of its major findings below:
The first conclusion is pretty self-evident: TikTok has become massively popular. Indeed, TikTok was the most downloaded app worldwide in 2021 with one billion active users as of September of the same year.
The reason for TikTok’s success likely stems from how people enjoy using the app. 64% of TikTok users say that they can be their true selves on the platform, and the average user session length is 10.85 minutes — making TikTok the most engaging of all social media platforms.
Lastly, TikTok has proven itself as a prosperous hub for e-commerce. 73% of users claim that they feel a deeper connection to the brands that they interact with on TikTok in comparison to those they interact with on other platforms. Indeed, consumer spending increased by 77% on TikTok in 2021.
The Meta/TikTok Rivalry Escalates
TikTok became a social media giant overnight. Less than four years after its global launch, TikTok gained its billionth user in September 2021. Current estimates suggest that TikTok will overtake the combined revenues of both Snapchat and Twitter by the end of 2022, and by 2024, it will match the revenue of YouTube.
Naturally, TikTok’s rise to stardom raises concerns for Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. As TikTok claims an increasingly bigger share of the 18-25 demographic, Meta tries to retain these users desperately through Instagram. Features such as reels that were brought to Instagram in TikTok’s image only exemplify this desperation.
In recent news, Meta continues to fight this battle by hiring a lobbying firm to paint TikTok as a foreign threat. This works on fears created in the Trump era surrounding Chinese companies posing national security threats, in addition to concerns that user data may be transferred to the Chinese government if prompted.
The battle between Instagram and TikTok has been in constant development for over a year now over owning the clip format. As the situation progresses, we will report back to you in future blogposts.
TikTok Sound Study
Earlier this year, TikTok concluded that ads containing music are less likely to be skipped, have a longer average watch time, and leave a more positive brand impression. To expand on these results, TikTok investigated what specific types of music are best suited for in-app advertisements.
This research was conducted with 10,000 TikTok users being shown a selection of ads from fake brands with different soundtracks from three categories: recognizable music, instrumental music, and brand-tailored tracks.
Recognizable music created the largest gains in likeability for ads. A Carrefour ad that used the popular song ‘All About that Cake’ earlier this year for a TopView ad, and they received a 24.72% clickthrough rate.
Instrumental music, however, has the greatest brand recall and is most likely to be shared online by the coveted 18-24 year old demographic.
Lastly, Brand-tailored tracks were seen as the most intelligent and received the most track clicks among the three categories.
The general conclusion of this study is that depending on the purpose of the ad and the intended demographic, the type of music needs to be chosen deliberately to meet your marketing goals.
TikTok Insights Report
This newest TikTok Insights Report looks at worldwide trends regarding who is using TikTok and how that relates to e-commerce, which we will explore the takeaways from below:
One of the most important trends to consider is the commitment of certain demographics to the app. About 80% of GenZ and Millennials respectively plan to use the TikTok the same amount or more in the future. This is a concern for Instagram, which is trying hard to steal this demographic to their planform.
Additionally, TikTokers show a very positive reception of in-app product promotion. One in three surveyed users bought a product because they saw it on TikTok in the past year. This makes e-commerce on the app very desirable for advertisers.
For further information, the full report can be found here.
TikTok Pulse
TikTok Pulse is a move to make advertising more desirable on the platform. This form of contextual advertising ensures brands that they are placed in a queue next to clips from the top 4% of all videos played on TikTok.
To help brands better target desired demographics, TikTok Pulse offers twelve categories in which brands can select for their ads to be placed alongside. To further ensure the quality of videos that will accompany these advertisements, Pulse ads will run adjacent to verified content.
Along with the shift to TikTok pulse, the platform will begin experimenting with its first advertising share program with content creators. This feature will be available to creators with at least 100k followers for the initial stages of the program. This monetization is TikTok’s way of rewarding creators such that they continue making content for the platform.
And there you have it! That’s everything … for now. Since social media platforms are competing with each other who has the most updates this year, don’t be surprised if we share another set of TikTok updates soon.