How has TikTok Taken Social Media by Storm?
- Jehan Majrouh
- Apr 8, 2021
- 2 min read
Providing your audience with valuable tools and information is as much an art as it is of science. So with all the popular Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and several other giant social media platforms, how is TikTok making it to the top of the ladder?
First, here's a bit about TikTok...
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company called ByteDance, and in 2018 it acquired the US app Musical.ly and merged them together to the new TikTok app.
How did TikTok become so viral?
If you're curious about achieving viral content, you may want to check out one of my other posts about unexpectedness if you haven't already. For now I'm going to focus on Jonah Berger's 6 STEPPS to contagious:
TikTok has provided people with the ease to create and share content videos that make its users look good and build Social currency.
Celebrity endorsements on TikTok were Triggers to drive TikTok's WOM.
Localized content has gotten onto people's Emotions, and as Jonah Berger says: when we care, we share!
Public visibility boosts W.O.M and creates triggers. E.g. the hashtag #tiktokchallenge, which has several videos sharing similar challenges on the platform, has been getting more people to take on particular challenges.
Practical value helps make valuable information get contagious and spread. Surely you might have seen a TikTok video shared on other platforms such as Facebook or sent to one of your WhatsApp groups? It is convenient with its video editing tools made simple for its users to create valuable content.
And finally, TikTok's Story gives people an easy way to talk about what it is and what it has to offer.
So what now?...
Jonah's 6 STEPPS can be applied to video, blog, apps and platforms. The below lists the 6 STEPPS, so make sure to bookmark them for future reference!
- Social currency requires developing remarkability with a product or idea, leveraging game mechanics, and making people feel like insiders to the brand.
- Triggers make people keep talking about the ideas or products.
- Emotions with high arousal spread and become viral. Therefore, kindling the fire and driving people to action.
- Public consumption, visibility and social proof boosts WOM and creates triggers.
- Practical Value - when people find practical information, they don't only use it, but they also share it. Practical value helps achieve contagion.
- Stories provides people with an easy way to talk about products or ideas.
At the end of the day, achieving all of the above 6 STEPPS is a complete combination to get contagious.
Have you experienced having your content go viral? What do you think made it work, and if you haven't, what areas do you think you could improve?
Hey Jehan,
This was really interesting to read, TikTok has been a great platform to keep an eye on. It's a little crazy busy for me but I've slowly come around and can see the links you are drawing on and why it's gone so crazy in such a short period of time.
Do you think the format in which TikTok adopts it's time limits and getting to the crux of the information or value as quickly as possible has been a massive contributor to its virality? There's the loss of the build up, the setting the scene, the story and it skips completely to the value/emotional/entertaining aspect of the video making it easy to catch audiences and them passing…
Hi Jehan! This was a really interesting read for me because I am one of those hypocritical people who always say "Why is everyone on TikTok?" as I scroll TikTok videos for hours haha. I actually did this week's blog post on Berger's 6 STEPPS framework as well. I only saw the framework on the surface level and only thought about how it can be applied through marketing campaigns and as an advertisement technique etc, but throughout reading your blog post it can be connected to a deeper idea.
As for your last question - as I am a Joiner on the Social Technographics Ladder - I've never made a viral content. however, I always feel that the focusing on…