SMALL ARTIST SATURDAY: USING TIKTOK AS AN CREATIVE

XANDER

By now everyone knows what TikTok is and has somewhat of an idea of how it can impact our music culture. From viral snippets to dances that propel certain songs and even remxis that go crazy too. There’s not doubt that there is a stigma surrounding the platforms, but when you dig deeper, the potential is insane.

STIGMA

When people think about TikTok their immediate thought is either “that dancing app” or “I’m too mature for TikTok” and while sure both have some merit, as a rising artist and creative in general TikTok offers a FREE and NEW platforms to gain exposure and the algorithm is in its early stages so working it in your favor is very easy. Once you get that TikTok isn’t going to be a professional way or infesting way to grow your presence, then you have nothing stopping you. We are creating art at the end of the day and when art becomes to serious and prodfessional it loses its appeal

HOW TO USE

Using TikTok is one of the easiest yet laboring platforms. You can easily post short videos at anytime of the day with no editing and create an audience off this (i.e day to day vlog TikTok’s) or you can create some more professional grade looking videos. Whichever route you take you need to understand three main principles

1. Watch time is king

2. No surface level advertising

3. Have backup content

1. Watch Time Is Key

This is fairly simple, the longer people watch your videos, the more they will be pushed. Shorter length videos are king of this but if you want to make longer videos, knowing how to edit and keep the audiences eyes engaged will also achieve this. Give them a reason to stay for the end.

2. No Surface Level Ads

People don’t want to feel like they’re being sold something. Being able to showcase what you do and giving them the tools to go to your product willingly is crucial. With a lot of musicians, they have their music in the background, build a skit around the song and even show how they made it. This is a great idea because its not only promotes the song you want, but it isn’t directly telling them to go listen or forcing them to take any action that they don’t want.

3.Back up content

This is can be seen as two different ways. First is by “batch creating” and having enough content that when you don’t have time to create a new post, you have backup videos ready to go. The second is by having enough content on your page so when someone goes it from a video, they have more to see. This lets those extra videos backup the video they originally saw.

SHOULD YOU “PLAY A PART”

Lastly, the big talk is should you be “playing a part” on TikTok. Short answer is no. You do not need to play a part, but you do need to play the game. What this means is that you do not need to put on a persona on tiktok. There are so many sub genres within the app that you can truly be yourself and people will relate and become attached. Instead, you need to play the game, and that means knowing what works and what doesn’t. While this seems like you are compromising your art, TikTok isn’t your art. TikTok is a funnel to bring people into your creative space and show them our art. The moment you treat TikTok as an “art” instead of the funnel, then you become complacent and lose the main focus.