Since launching in the U.S. in 2018, TikTok has cemented itself in viral culture. It has given birth to dance crazes, popular catchphrases and food trends. It also jump-started the careers of a generation of young influencers.
Now, TikTok is being embraced by a new group of internet wizards: memers.
Multi-platform meme brands like @Daquan, @Betch and @Memezar have begun investing heavily in TikTok in recent months. They’ve already amassed millions of followers, surpassing many influencers. Midlevel independent Instagram memers, many who create memes in specific genres such as gaming, are also pivoting toward TikTok. And more teens are using the platform to build meme brands from the ground up.
“I can’t overstate just how much TikTok has taken hold in the meme space,” said Don Caldwell, the editor in chief of Know Your Meme, a website that documents memes. “A lot of people associate TikTok with Charli D’Amelio and these dance trends. It’s actually a platform where all kinds of viral content can proliferate and thrive.”
Memers act as small media companies that reshare trending videos, images, and jokes in order to amass large audiences on social platforms, which they then monetize by selling products or posting ads.
“TikTok was very individual-focused for so long, but people are finding other ways to aggregate and grow now,” said CEO of Memes by Cowbelly. The amount of growth you get on TikTok from one viral video is so much compared to other platforms, it compels more people to start these meme accounts.”
Growing fast can involve shady behavior. Meme pages have been notorious for their scrappy nature and dubious growth hacks on Instagram and YouTube, and many have begun replicating that on TikTok.
Meme accounts can be found in the comment sections of popular TikTok stars’ videos posting things like “follow for follow” or “follow for a big reveal.” Many also grow by starting off as joke pages, designed to troll users who ask for the handles of women featured in videos.
“Let’s say there’s a TikTok account that posted a video of a girl dancing, everyone in the comments is like, ‘she’s so hot, what’s her @?’” said Graham Heavenrich, founder of Memes by Cowbelly, a meme publishing company. “People will be like, ‘oh it’s this,’ and tag one of those meme pages. Then they click it and it’s like it’s like, ‘psych.’”
There is a point in every social media platform’s life when it is forced to grapple with the community of memers bending the limits of the platform to go viral. Most platforms have responded by banning them.
Strategies Unleashed: Navigating TikTok’s Viral Trends for Brand Success according to ‘Memes by Cowbelly’
TikTok is where the action is for brands wanting to go viral today. So many brands have found viral success on the platform, purposefully or accidentally, and there is no other platform that may be as useful to businesses seeking to connect with millennials and Gen Z according to Head of Content at Memes by Cowbelly.
However, finding success on TikTok goes beyond the savvy use of hashtags and having fun content to share. The nuances of the TikTok economy involve finding a winning product, creating engaging content, mastering the algorithm and avoiding the mistakes that have tripped up brands in the past.
Here are some strategies for navigating the often chaotic world of TikTok viral marketing.
Navigating TikTok Trends
Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of TikTok takes agility as a marketer. One must be willing to closely monitor popular hashtags, challenges, content formats and opportunities to authentically engage with one’s audience. It can be a job in and of itself.
Finding a product that will be successful on the platform is often the first step in leveraging TikTok trends. To hit on the right product, one must consider the TikTok demographic — one in four TikTok users is under the age of 20 and over half are female.
Performing a deep dive into what is currently trending on the platform can be a good place to start in landing on the right product to sell. Products that do well on TikTok tend to be fun, problem-solving and easy to create content with. For example, products such as carpet scrapers, headphones, sunset lamps and even a rapid egg cooker have all gone viral on the platform. Products that meet the “viral criteria” typically have videos with over 500,000 views, 50,000 likes and/or over 1,000 comments.
While doing your in-depth research, you should look for hashtags popular with sellers and content creators such as #tiktokmademebuyit. Diving down the rabbit hole of hashtags like these will show you exactly what products people are going crazy over.
Ecommerce Growth with TikTok
Today’s consumers have short attention spans and are constantly on the lookout for the next big thing in viral content. To make a splash on a platform like TikTok that caters to this kind of consumer behavior, you must become adept at creating content that quickly showcases why your product deserves to go viral.
TikTok users may want quick, often quirky content, but this doesn’t mean they are not highly engaged. They can turn even the most innocuous-seeming products into viral sensations overnight, creating incredible brand awareness for the business.
The TikTok algorithm is tailor-made for entrepreneurs, prioritizing views over followers. This means even businesses brand-new to the platform can land in front of consumers if their content is appealing and they are presenting the right product for the TikTok demographic.
To get the most out of TikTok use, entrepreneurs need to make their products easy to buy. It isn’t enough that the content is engaging if it does not compel someone to hit the “buy” button. Brands should supply easy-to-find links to their ecommerce sites or their LinkTree. On TikTok, users will often put this information in their bios.
TikTok also offers seamless shopping feature integrations on the platform, which allows users to buy products immediately through shoppable ads and in-app checkout. What you provide on the backend can be just as important to your ultimate success as what you show in your short-form video content.
