Is TikTok The New Social Media Powerhouse?
Despite early concerns with TikTok over data security and Chinese snooping, it looks like it’s here to stay. Since TikTok launched in 2016, its growth has been exponential with 1 billion monthly active users, and while it’s currently ‘only’ the sixth most popular platform globally, the network is on track to be near 1.8 billion members by the end of the year. While TikTok is behind Facebook, with 2.9 billion monthly users, and Instagram, with 2 billion monthly, it still presents a legitimate threat to the other social media platforms.
Let’s have a look into why TikTok has become such a powerhouse in the social media world:
Growth Rate - and still rapidly growing
Between January 2018, the year TikTok became available globally, and July 2020 TikTok’s global user base increased by 1,157.76%. In the U.S. alone, TikTok increased by 787.86%. This is a huge growth by any measure and is particularly noticeable considering the U.S. Government tried to ban and place restrictions on the platform.
User Engagement
One could argue that TikTok is one of the most engaging platforms, because people spend a lot of time on it. In fact the average session length is nearly 11 minutes, which is twice the amount of time spent on the #2 platform, Pinterest.
In 2022 the average users watch 91 minutes of TikTok per day, compared to 59 minutes on YouTube. It’s worth noting that typically TikTok videos are very short, so spending over an hour on the platform means watching a lot of content. This is why TikTok in 2022 has been dubbed the most addictive social app with 29.7 hours spent per month on average (Facebook 16 hours and Instagram 8 hours).
Video Consumption
It will come as no surprise that 1 billion videos are watched daily considering the length of time users spend on the app. This is an enormous amount of videos and is probably one of the reasons why the platform is growing so fast.
The U.S. has the largest TikTok Audience in the world
Although Americans are on many different social media platforms, it’s worth noting that TikTok has around 80 million of active users in the U.S; 60% females and 40% males, and 60% of them are between the ages 16 and 34. In April 2022, approximately 136.5 million U.S. based users engaged on TikTok, making the U.S. the largest TikTok audience by far with Indonesia coming in second at around 99 million and Brazil third with 74 million. The Chinese users technically are the largest although they are on a different site altogether called Douyin.
User Age
In the U.S. the largest demographic user group for TikTok is 18 - 34 years old, however, it is worth pointing out that 17.7% of TikTok users are aged 12-17. TikTok focuses on challenges, jokes and dances that appeal to the younger generation and thus children’s clothing and sporting apparel commercials featuring dance themes do very well.
TikTok Influencers
TikTok is an excellent platform to show off your personality and humor, and the platform has several very popular content creators. Many users relate to the creators and like other social networks, many of these content creators are also influencers. The most popular influencer being Khabane Lamar, who has 150 million followers. From a TikTok point of view, almost anyone can become successful, and for a marketer there are many opportunities to tap into these popular content creators to help reach target audiences.
So what do these TikTok stats tell us? For starters, if your audience skews younger, you should definitely be here! People flock to TikTok because it offers something they can’t find elsewhere. With many influencers being unique to TikTok, the app's success is partly due to their efforts at keeping the audience engaged and entertained through an intuitive combination of music, topics, and dance challenges offered. With some creative, fun and relevant content, TikTok is an excellent choice for marketers to harvest the attention of the younger generation and to reach target audiences through collaborations, in other words TikTok is currently one of the best places to see and be seen.