TikTok Marketing

TikTok is a fascinating newer social media platform that has paved its way into the global net with staying power.

Image from Recurpost

TikTok is a fascinating social media platform. Similar in its way to Vine, TikTok has paved its way into the global net with staying power.

TikTok is social media platform focused on video content. It has short-form videos that often rely on challenged and audio effects. It has several sound effects, music and the ability to clip audio, making for interesting background noise to play with for your videos.

The short video content TikTok creates, similarly to Vine, has fast enough videos that it can keep a viewer entertained for a long period of time. Its analytics are designed perfectly to gain an understanding of a viewer and keep feeding them content that is within their interest allowing them to be coerced into binging content without noticing how much time has passed. This is a great design to push marketing.

TikTok in its original form was launched in China under the name A.me in 2016, later changing the name to TikTok in 2017. It was an app that was always planned to go overseas. Its content AI pushes forward content similar to that a viewer liked, interacted with or looked up. (Source wiki)

As one of the most popular apps, it’s no surprise that marketing on TikTok can be hugely successful. As much of the content a person receives on TikTok is related to something they’re interested in it makes landing the interest of the viewer much greater than if it was simply sent out to the greater public. Due to TikTok’s algorithm viewers are shown products that relate to their interests or are endorsed by those they admire.

Due to TikTok’s algorithm, an account with no followers can grow in popularity and view much faster than on any other site. If a brand creates an account there is a large chance they could gain traction if they follow trends, use tags and post consistently. If a brand makes it into the circuit of content that someone watches the spread of that content will accelerate.

Another way which brands use TikTok to expand marketing is to collaborate with content creators. Due to the nature of TikTok creating content is much cheaper than traditional adverting. A company simply has to pay creators for their time. The popularity of creators causes their audience to gain interest in the product and due to the way social media works, other creators will likely do reviews of products increasing the conversation around a product.

TikTok is a great tool for businesses both small and large to use to gain a larger audience and communicate with consumers.

Have you noticed any interesting TikTok marketing campaigns? How did they utilize the app to their benefit?

Facebook:
The use of TikTok for marketing. https://wp.me/p3QRy0-v7m

Twitter:

Is TikTok the future of marketing? #TikTok #SocialMedia #Marketing https://wp.me/p3QRy0-v7m

Fast Paced Fashion

Image from Clip-Studio

In the ever-changing online world, it is hard to keep up with trends. What’s popular changes in the blink of an eye and in a moment too soon what’s popular becomes passé.
The fashion world, due to the online world, is moving at a new speed that we haven’t seen before. It used to be that it would take 20 years for a trend to fall out of favour and come back again. That is no longer the case. Due to the constant stimulation and oversaturation of the online world, people become bored of style trends far faster than we used to.

On social media fashion trends spread like wildfire. With someone popular wearing a beautiful piece, it seems natural for others to want to follow suit. But with the over-saturation of social media, this is where the problems arise.


Dupes

A major issue with the rise in popularity of pieces is the reality of copycat pieces. If a garment comes on the marketing and grows in popularity, it’s just a matter of time before a dupe comes along. While the dupes may be easier on your wallet, the theft of design shouldn’t sit well.

Many clothing companies are designed to run purely on stolen design. While general styles are open for any brand to make their own changes, there are specific pieces that have become so popular that cheaper replicas pop up on the market.

For example, the popular House of Sunny green dress called Hockey Dress which swept across TikTok now has many dupes and even articles written about these dupes.

http://stylecaster.com/house-of-sunny-hockney-dress-dupe-amazon/

Through the fast-paced cycle of fashion, one might feel enticed to jump on the newest trend and buy themselves the new piece. But the reality of such an oversaturated market leads to people losing interest very quickly and the piece being viewed as passé a lot faster.

The high turnover of fashion trends leads to higher spending, more pieces being thrown out. This leads to a huge issue in waste and consumption. This is the bread and butter of fast fashion.

The Problem With Fast Fashion

Fast Fashion is corrupting the general ecosystem of the fashion industry. With the low prices, the actual cost of labour and materials is not accounted for so people think that items that are actually priced fairly are overpriced.

Fast fashion focuses on cheaper manufacturing and design methods in order to be able to make a higher volume of clothing for cheaper while being able to make a profit. This often means that designs are stolen, fabrics are lower quality and workers are underpaid. When we think about these issues we should think about their outcomes.

Brands tend to look for countries that have lower labour standards to exploit workers who would have otherwise cost much more to them. We should hold our fashion companies to higher standards than this.
Another considerable problem with fast fashion is the waste. The products are often made with cheap fabric, often made with plastics and a lot of it gets wasted. Due to the nature of the current fashion industry and fast fashion trends are not made to last. And what happens to the clothing after a trend dies? Unfortunately, quantities get thrown out. This means a great deal of waste of fabric, time, labour and resources.

For further reading check out this link.

Conclusion

While keeping up with the trends might be fun, I’d encourage you to look for pieces that you’ll enjoy for a long time to come. Trends may change but good quality clothing is forever.

Facebook:
Fashion Trends and Their Dangers. https://wp.me/p3QRy0-uXS

Twitter:

The Dangers of Fashion Trends. #fashion #fastfashion #socialmediatrends https://wp.me/p3QRy0-uXS

Social Media’s Algorithm Bias

Social media has a vast array of information and knowledge that we can acquire, but the algorithm isn’t set up for that.

Image from Everypixel

Social media has a vast array of information and knowledge that we can acquire, but the algorithm isn’t set up for that.

Social media is set to keep us on their apps for as long as possible. The algorithm is set up in such a way to feed us a constant stream of content that it believes we will enjoy, to keep us scrolling and browsing.

Have you ever looked up at the clock after being on a social media app and realized how much time has passed as you have gone down a rapid hole?

It’s a really smart design. Though, it has its dangerous effects. By feeding us constant information that aligns with what we were looking at and what it thinks we would like, it feeds us very similar information. It can get us sucked into homogeneous information enforcing certain opinions. By bringing up opinions that constantly align one can get drawn into extreme bias.

Apparently “approximately two-thirds of American’s receive their news from Twitter” (Kulshrestha pg. 417-418) this is a large amount of the population reading news on a site that is designed with an algorithm set on recommended bias. Assuming that one follows a thread of the same news and reads the comments posted on each news story one can get a repeat of information with correlating opinions. It can lead us to view the world a lot more black and white, as we are less likely to read things by choice of a different opinion, with more grey tones. This is extremely dangerous because it leads to a constant diverging of opinions which creates a chasm between viewpoints.

 On the other hand, social media’s algorithm can be used for your own benefit, if you know how to use it. If you have a particular passion, such as design, art, fashion, etc., the apps will realize this and give you more posts relating to these interests, giving you further inspiration. Or if you’re looking for a job or to do submissions of any kind, after looking on the apps for a while, they will start to feed you job postings and submission calls, making your search easier. Just be careful that they’re real.

At the end of the day, social media is how you use it, so I’d encourage you to take a moment to think about it and ask yourself “is the algorithm working for me, or against me?”

Facebook:
Social media got you on the hook? Dangers of the algorithm bias. https://wp.me/p3QRy0-uPt

Twitter:

Social media and algorithm bias. #socialmedia #algorithmbias #makesocialmediaworkforyou https://wp.me/p3QRy0-uPt

Kulshrestha, Juhi, et al. “Quantifying Search Bias.” Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998321. 

Social Media and Connection in a Time of Isolation

Social media has long received a lot of scrutiny due to its addictive nature and the way it keeps us glued to our phones. But in a time where we are so isolated its benefits truly shine.

Image from Stock Vector

Social media has long received a lot of scrutiny due to its addictive nature and the way it keeps us glued to our phones. But in a time where we are so isolated its benefits truly shine.

Social media has been an easy way for people to receive updates on their friends and family whether near or far. This makes it easier for us to connect with others compared to the pre-internet where it would take ages for a letter to arrive or you’d have to pay for expensive phone calls. Social Media allows for easy communication with minimal effort.

During the time of the pandemic Social media has become even more important. If we didn’t have social media where would we be? These forms of communication allow us to maintain connections with those we normally wouldn’t be able to. Imagine the isolation we could feel if these avenues of communication weren’t accessible.

Most social media platforms have updates where we can see what our friends have been up to as well as having messaging software. From image messaging to audio messaging to written messaging, we get to communicate with others while even while not necessarily having the same schedule. On top of messaging most social media platforms also have calling systems, both for video and audio calls. Having features like this allows us to comfortably have conversations and hang out with people while still socially distancing. This is a form of communication has become integral for maintaining connections with loved ones when normal interactions become limited. Not having it would heavily hinder our mental health.
Meeting people from near and far has also become easier, whether in a time of isolation or not. Social media has allowed us to meet people through mutual interests, appreciation of photos on places such as Instagram, to humour and opinions on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. If you enjoy something someone puts out on the internet, you may be able to start conversing with them and form an online friendship.

This ease of meeting new people also applies to dating. Dating new people has been able to continue while in isolation due to social media and dating apps. We can still meet potential interests and build meaningful connections, now it just starts online. We can start talking with people before having to commit to meeting in person. This can make many people feel safer during these unprecedented times.

It’s wonderful that we can still build and maintain connections with people without having to limit ourselves in times of isolation.

FaceBook:

Does Social Media keep us connected during times of isolation? Social Media and Connection

Twitter:

Does Social Media keep us connected during times of isolation? #socialmedia Social Media and Connection