TikTok Speaks It’s Own Language 🙊
Much of the confusion about TikTok stems from people on the outside not understanding the platform and its unique language 🗣️
Other platforms have their own languages as well. But since these platforms have been around longer, we already speak those languages without realizing it!
Imagine telling someone in the year 2000 that “I retweeted a GIF, then a verified account commented and tagged me, and my post went viral!” 🤨
Everyone nowadays would understand that.
So in terms of a baseline, most people just haven’t learned the TikTok vocab yet: FYP, OOMF, IYKYK, etc. If you think about it though, this is about on par with the percentage of people not knowing what “rewteeting” meant when Twitter had been popular for about as long as TIkTok has!
Time for the curveball ⚾
Everything I’ve outlined about is only half the story 🤔
That’s because there’s something that makes TikTok more radically different than other social media platforms: trends.
Even if you understand the lingo, you simply won’t understand Tikok without understanding trends.
And trends aren’t a bunch of people doing a silly dance.
Trends are the evolution of ideas 💡 if you really think about it.
Someone makes a piece of content and people make increasingly better variations of it that are all related to that first piece of content.
TikTok has created an environment that enables and encourages content to go through iterations and improvements that mimic biological evolution 🧬
Trying to post an old trend that no one engages with anymore is like a maladapted Dodo bird appearing in the modern world and getting wrecked by modern animals 🪦
In this hypercompetitive landscape those who adapt quickly don’t just survive, they thrive because not everyone can successfully post content that speaks the TikTok language fluently 🚀
Chameleons 🦎 Ads Don’t Look Like Ads
It’s time to talk about the ads 👀
But first, let’s examine how TikTok is, yet again, radically different from other platforms like Facebook/Instagram.
On FB/IG, the content you see varies wildly in terms of form:
- Text posts
- Short
- Long
- Images
- Horizontal
- Square
- Veritical
- 4:5
- 9:16
- Videos
- Horizontal
- Square
- Veritical
- 4:5
- 9:16
On TikTok, it’s just:
- 9:16 video
So in a sense, you’re incredibly constrained from a content creation point of view.
You have to do a 9:16 video and it has to be up to date with the current trends or you’ll have committed TikTok’s worst sin 😳 running content (ads) that clash with the rest of the content on the platform.
I mean, you can run content like that if you want to burn money 🔥
That’s often what happens when newbies start advertising on the platform ☠️
It makes perfect sense if you think about it though. If you’ve ever used TikTok, you’ve probably already had the jarring experience of scrolling through content that’s all similar then seeing an ad that stands out more than 🤔😵👽🥺
Of course people scroll past them as fast as they can!
The most successful ads are like chameleons 🦎 that blend in with the trends and editing style that everyone else is using. That’s how you keep people from scrolling right past you and increase your chances of netting a better positive impact from your ads.
An added bonus is that due to the passive nature of the platform, in the sense that you’re scrolling on auto-pilot vs actively searching for something, the users’ ad defenses are down.
That’s great news to advertisers, as we can more easily influence people when they’re paying attention to our ads without realizing 👺
TikTok vs. Instagram Reels
TikTok struck gold 
on the addictive and dopamine-inducing nature of short form video content. Meta, strugglnig with the size of their userbase, went all in on Reels to try to imitate TikTok’s success.
Even though Reels have been out for a while, there’s still some confusion as to how they relate to TikTok’s content.
I heard one story where someone’e uncle watches Reels all the time but complains about how TikTok is making Gen Z stupider 
Something that anyone who has watched Reels realizes is that much of the content on Reels comes directly from TikTok itself! And that trend doesn’t seem to often go the other way.
Often times the trends on Reels are days or weeks behind the ones that started and had already died out on TikTok.
A part of it is undoubtedly TikTok’s big and super active suerbase. Another part, the unsung hero of TikTok, is it’s video editor 
Having such a great video editor in the app itself helps users effectively get out content and in the same style as other users on the app (this also makes it harder for outside content to get into TikTok) 
The following images are from a great article by Zixuan Wang that shows how Instagram and TikTok keep changing their interfaces as Instagram tries to hide TikTok’s logo on exported content.
Originally, the TikTok logo was in one of these two positions:
When the TikTok videos were uploaded to Instagram, the ones with the lower logo had the TikTok logos obscured by Instagram’s interface.
When the TikTok videos were uploaded to Instagram, the ones with the lower logo had the TikTok logos obscured by Instagram’s interface.
TikTok raised the placement of the lower logo in an update. In an update from Instagram soon after, they raised their interface to block TikTok’s log again!
It’s clear who’s the leader vs follower between these two 
The Dark Side Of TikTok
It seems like in the news every six months or so, there’s talk about banning TikTok 
The proponents of the ban typically believe in one of two possible scenarios:
- That the company is benign but its content is hurting people psychologically
- That the Chinese Communist Party is using the app to gather intelligence as well as intentionally weaponizing it to hurt people
There’s a growing number of people vocalizing their concern over the damage that TikTok could be doing to people’s minds, especially children. There’s even a term “TikTok Brain” to describe a series of psychological issues found among TikTok users 
Going even further, some point out that the domestic Chinese version of the app, Douyin, limits the time that teenagers can spend on it to 40 minutes per day and is unavailable between 10 pm. and 6 am. The content on Douyin tends to be educational, positive, and kid-friendly.
To some this is evidence that TikTok (unavailable in mainland China 
) is malicious.
We’re going to steer clear of controversy and not pick a side in the debate, we’re just here to talk about advertising 
It’s just important to know what some people claim the dark side of the app to be, in the case that they are successful in banning or heavily limiting its usage one day.
How To Deal With This Black Sheep
TikTok is so often misunderstood and criticized. For a while, many chose to ignore it.
It’s no longer possible to ignore. The black sheep has become the elephant in the room 
In many ways, TikTok is a paradox. You have to communicate in a very specific way to be heard, but the trends change so fast that a perfect video now is totally obsolete in a few weeks.
It’s the fastest growing social media platform but it could also be banned at seemingly any moment 
The other major advertising platforms simultaneously want to acquire it, emmulate it, and ban it.
Many people don’t understand or just despise TikTok but interact with its content on a daily basis and are affected by how it affects popular culture without realizing it.
So how should brands interact with this enigmatic platform?
You need someone who speaks the language, an active user 
Be prepared to pivot quickly as the trends change ⏎
Always be a chameleon 
TikTok is one of the few platforms left (*cough* *cough* LinkedIn) with organic reach potential.
Whether it’s via organic or paid, lots of brands can get a lot of value out of the platform 
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