TikTok Newsletter 17

🔌 Tactics & Training 📊 Analytics & Tools 🎹 Woman Versus Machine

Hello

and welcome to “some essential reading if you want to keep up to date with TikTok trends and developments.” I am quoting Laura and i am blushing. Thx! Follow her on TikTok & Twitter. Before we proceed here is yet another public service announcement.

Ich habe meine TikTok-Aktivitäten (Studie, diverse Workshops, Kunden) auf einer Seite gebündelt TikTok: Taktik & Training 🔌 Anfragen gerne hier. That was german.

I played around with one of my favourite tools (Notion), bought a sweet and short domain (tttt.space), fiddled around with Cloudflare and bundled TikTok things i am doing these days.

Alright. Newsflash 💥

After reporting about the Pakistan Ban last week: Pakistan lifts TikTok ban after just 10 days (The Verge, October 19). Well, that was quick. And while the ban was probably more about censorship than morality. The end of the ban is probably more about geopolitics than content moderation. I just skimmed the China–Pakistan relations article on Wikipedia but i highlighted this sentence: Pakistan's military depends heavily on Chinese armaments, and joint projects of both economic and militaristic importance are ongoing. 🇨🇳 🇵🇰

This week we talk about

📊 Analytics & Tools
🎹 Woman Versus Machine

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📊 Analytics & Tools

If you are here for quantifiable success, if you are here for the numbers then you are probably already using analytics tools. We are talking plural here, because there are quite some tools out there. Besides fancy visualisations and endless numbers it is important to track the right metrics with the right tool in order to take some of the guesswork out of your content strategy.

I happily admit that i have only just begun digging deeper into this field. I have read a bunch of listicles promising the best 5, 8, 10 or 11 TikTok analytics tools. I have checked out self-made tools posted on Indie Hackers. And i tried to find out if powerhouse Hootsuite can do TikTok. It can not. Right? Not yet?!

So before testing out all these tools, as always you should begin with a bunch of questions: Why do you need a TikTok analytics tool? What do you want to achieve with it? For instance: It is a huge difference if you want to collect mentions, track topics or performance or want to find suiting influencers for your campaign.
Apart from that a nice UI and UX are important!

The very first thing to do in order to start your journey into analytics is turning your ordinary TikTok account into a TikTok pro account: The main difference between a TikTok pro account and a regular account boils down to TikTok analytics. Pro accounts offer them, while regular accounts don’t. (The Complete Guide to TikTok Analytics: How to Measure Your Success, Hootsuite Blog June, 24)

And now what? You want more? Okay. There are infludata, pentos, exolyt, popsters, infohats, analisa,  reachbird, tikstats, tiklytics, toki, melody socials, tikrank. And there are more. And more. And there will be even more. Keep in mind that some are pretty pricey. Probably no way around trying out some…

You are looking for an easy how-to sheet of what to do? In the TL;DR of this article you find one way of doing it: 

Step 1: When you’re starting to plan your campaign and are looking for new potential profiles, we recommend starting with Melody Socials for their superior search features.

Step 2: If you already have a potential list of influencers to work with, and now are screening them further then use Clout Meter to make sure none of them shows suspicious behavior.

Step 3: Fake influencers are on the rise even with new platforms like TikTok. Once you are about to kick off your campaign and want to track its performance, we would recommend going with Popsters as it provides in-depth analysis of both profiles and hashtags with responsive charts. If your campaign is specifically about a music track or video, then you have no choice than to use Pentos. 

I hope that this gives you a first idea. In the coming weeks i will have a closer look. If you are already using one of the analytics tools mentioned or know of another good one, i am happy to hear about your experiences. Feel free to write a mail.

🎹 Woman Versus Machine

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Rumours’ Returns to the Top 10, Thanks to TikTok (New York Times, October 19). Yes. We talked about doggface & the music industry  in newsletter 14. And i repeat my verdict: Ever since Myspace maybe no other social media platform has shaped the way we consume, discover, discuss and create music like TikTok.

This week another article caught my eye. How Do You Predict the Next TikTok Music Hit? With a Ton of Data (Rolling Stone, October 12). It is about the data-driven startup Songfluencer that uses analytics to drive TikTok marketing. Here is a quote: While many labels try to use TikTok as rocket fuel to turn songs into overnight hits, Songfluencer prefers a more patient approach. “Labels want big first-week numbers,” Pace says. “But TikTok isn’t the place to go for that. You go to TikTok for growth over weeks seven through twenty.”

I have two thoughts on that. Besides big numbers TikTok currently is a temporary place for the weird, the obscure and the forgotten too. Especially when it comes to music. Think of the entire Blackpool grime scene story (M to the B) or the latest Caretaker challenge: What Happens When TikTok Looks To The Avant-Garde For A Challenge? (NPR, October 22) and 'Everywhere At The End Of Time' Becomes TikTok Challenge (The Quietus, October 19). Quote: Mostly, I wish Mark Fisher was here to witness this whole thing. 🖤

Apart from that there is the general question: Who should do the curating? Machines or humans? Both? Alice and Faye from High Tea are human i guess. Their latest newsletter is all about TikTok musicians. Curated by hand: 🎓 class of 2020.

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Okay, that´s it. If you want more. Follow TikTok Tactics on Twitter. Basically just a collection of material. Rough Cut. But you do not miss a thing.

Oh. And Sophia has finished her first TV documentary: America’s TikTok Election. If you are more into reading. Here is the PDF of a paper: Fifteen Seconds of Fame: TikTok and the Democratization of Mobile Video on Social Media. Quote: “This paper represents the first large-scale quantitative descriptive analysis of TikTok Politics.” Will probably discuss it next week…

Ciao
Marcus