How we can make TikTok videos better? A lot of the ways that we can do that stem from knowing more about the platform TikTok itself, and keeping those things in mind while you are creating and posting the content. In order, we're going to talk about how long people use TikTok on average.
How much time people spend every time they pick up the phone and get on the app, what that means for the way that we should create content as well as how long videos are and will be. Also, If hashtags are still a thing and a little bit about the algorithm as well, what we should do for the years to come in terms of planning, and how long do people use TikTok?
You have to remember there's over a billion users on TikTok. A couple of billion now. TikTok users average 112 minutes on the app daily. The average length of a TikTok is 15 to 30 seconds, 13 is actually like the worldwide average of a TikTok length.
So, if you can imagine 13 seconds is the average TikTok and people are scrolling for 112 minutes. That's a ton of TikTok people are consuming. What that means for the way that we should create content is every time someone gets on the app, on average, they're going to be looking at around 200 TikTok videos.
We need to be doing something that lets us stick out and ultimately just become more memorable. You also want stuff that will get people to continue to consume your content over and over. I'm going to dive into that a little bit, but I think a lot of it comes down to being memorable. A lot of it comes down to storytelling itself and being able to keep people in the draw and the allure of whether it be the brand, the personality and whatever it may be.
The way that we can become more memorable inside of TikTok has a lot to kind of do with the last podcast I put out. It was a couple episodes that were over how to create videos and the actual video itself. Those first the first 3 seconds, the first 10 seconds, and then ultimately the rest of the video.
We were talking about Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for that episode, but I think it plays into TikTok really well, as you guys could imagine seeing Vine back in the day, when you get somebody to watch past, the first 3 seconds of your TikTok they're most likely going to stick around for another 3 to 7 seconds. If you can keep them for that, they'll probably watch the rest of the video.
The way you get people to do that is to tell a story of some sort and to keep people interested and to get them to watch as much of the video as you can. We also talked about that in the episode, the more time you can get somebody to spend with your brand, the more likely they are to convert and to become one of your keyboard warriors for your brand, an actual loyal customer. So how long are the videos currently, the average length of a video, and how long it can be?
On TikTok right now, if you remember when the platform started, it was 15 seconds or 30 seconds and they continue to increase the time and they're currently beta testing the 5 minute length. They're basically doing what YouTube did over the years.
If you've been on YouTube for tenor, I've been on there for 14 years now. That is when I posted my first video. When YouTube came out you could have us 10 minutes up until 2010, and then they finally moved it to 15. YouTube is sitting at 12 hours or 128 gigabytes of footage, which that's a ton of file data.
TikTok is just following the footsteps that YouTube has paved. With the extension of lengths and then their actual counterpart in China. If you don't know, TikTok originated in China and they actually have a Chinese version of TikTok. They have already moved up their maximum link to 12 or 24 hours. The reason that the maximum length is important is because we as creators and the people that are going to be marketing this content need to be able to, again, keep people as long as possible.
If you can do that in a long form manner of content you're winning! As we know that TikTok is at 3 minutes right now, testing 5 minutes and is most likely going to get up to 12 hours eventually. That doesn't mean we have to make 12 hour videos, right? But it does allow us to have more potential in terms of the time spent with the brain. That's what they're ready to do. You will see if you go and look and find some brand that's interesting to you, you may actually sit unknowingly and consume content for 9 to 15 minutes.
That's awesome for those brands because you're doing exactly what they want you to do. When you're creating content, a lot of what we're bringing up in here is just getting you all educated a little bit more on the platform. Also, what is to come so that you're not only thinking about that as you create and post content now, but you can kind of start to practice and get ready for the future when the links are increasing and TikTok rolling out all of these new features. TikTok can roll out anything at any point in time.
It's just like Facebook in like Meta. You can get on the platform and it looks different. All of a sudden there's like the menu bars on the left now instead of the right. They can do anything they want basically overnight and you immediately have to get with the times.
If you are reading this, I commend you just because you're trying to learn and keep up with that stuff and continue to do that because whether you see it being beta tested, or you hear about it beforehand or not, they're going to continue to test things. They're a very, very innovative social platform.
They've become one of the most popular in the entire world overnight, whereas it took Facebook about like 5 to 10 years. The next thing I wanted to go over was if hashtags are still a thing and the algorithm with TikTok. No, hashtags do not matter. I've heard this from numerous sources that are smarter than me with all of social media.
People that are really focused on the algorithms for all of these social platforms Hashtags are really not so much of a matter anymore. The keywords and the actual posts are.
The caption itself, every word that you punched into that caption counts as keywords and works toward the algorithm, just like the hashtags do.
No one is searching by hashtags, unless you're brand new to the platform. If you go and look in your pages, insights on the stats for video views and all of that, most of the time, 90 plus percent of all of the views come from the for you page and not from hashtags.
If you use the playlist feature on TikTok, I've heard that is super beneficial for businesses and creators for keeping people involved with the brand to keep that allure, because it just makes them continue to consume content.
On top of the ability for playlists to get people to continue to consume content with your brand, the actual length of the videos themselves can be longer. That means, you can keep people in that playlist loop a little bit longer. That ties back to the average length of how long people spend on TikTok.
A hashtag on my first 40 characters is where it's the only chance to like visually pull somebody in apart from the actual text on top of the TikTok itself, which is another really good thing to mention. The fact that you would be making a video inside of the app, TikTok, when you click publish, it's not just sending off a video file, it comes from whatever filters, audio clips, or text you put on it.
All of those are being attributed to what the TikTok is, and how the TikTok algorithm is going to use that video to filter it into the pages of other people.
It's also using actual data from your footage to source that to other people's "For You" pages as well. Focus more so on what the actual keywords are inside the caption, on-screen text and then, the actual content inside of the videos that speaks for itself.
We, globally, as humans are posting 720,000 hours of video per day to the internet across all of the social platforms. TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, all these platforms have tons and tons of data to work from daily. We need to remember that as content creators.
How are we to plan for the years to come? We need to focus on the storytelling.
TikTok is ultimately conditioning us as users and the content creators to spend more time on the app. That's how TikTok wins. We spend more time in the app and as businesses on the app, which is get people to spend more time with us.
TikTok benefits from us creating better content. We benefit from it. If it's good enough content, the actual consumer of the content enjoys it and benefits from it as well. Especially with the playlists and the video links extending, focusing on the amount of time spent is a big thing. Go through your insights and try to learn as much as you can from all of the data, because the truth of the matter is that is the biggest thing we can do to learn to manage our TikTok pages. As well as turn and convert the page followers into dollars for the business is to get them to spend more time with your brand.
