What is popular on TikTok?

Lately, I have managed to overcome my resistance to TikTok dances and lipstick and dedicate some time to this platform. Although my emotions towards the mentioned two forms of expression have not changed, I discovered a large number of creators who entertained me with their content, original ideas, and performance. It is content that includes well-written sketches and storytimes. I will single out three channels that are especially interesting to me.

What am I watching?

Elyse Myers recently went viral, thanks to her story about the worst first date. In general, all her stories are interesting to me (and to the millions who watch them) and they are extremely witty. I even noticed that I would like to narrate like that in an ideal world. The editing that accompanies the video gives additional dynamism to her calm voice and absurd conclusions. I will not spoil it, if you are drawn to a first date story, you have a whole channel to enjoy.

Laura Whaley is a Canadian TikToker who creates business comedy, specifically that related to working in a corporation. The evolution of work from home that she represents in the videos is slightly caricatured, but, to be honest, it doesn't seem that far from reality. Conversations with a therapist in which she shares her greatest traumas also sound familiar.

Adrian Bliss has had an active YouTube career before, but I think short videos are his ideal form. The ideas this man has are... unexpected. He often parodies scenes and characters from history and prehistory, so we can see how criminals use the baptism from John the Baptist to wash away all their sins, how a dinosaur meets his descendant a chicken, and there are also sketches with very interesting twists, like this one where sperm comes across to something he thinks is an egg. In any case, I would like this man to be a creative director somewhere so that he has such crazy ideas for commercials as well.

What is being watched?

The survey, conducted by SEMRush, analyzed the 300 most-watched TikTok videos in order to determine existing patterns and define what is more likely to be popular. From this, we, the marketing people, can learn something.

The first obvious thing is that content that looks organic achieves better results, so if you are a brand you need to create content that looks like it was made by an ordinary person. We all knew this, now we only get confirmation. Speaking about a person, you need a person, so you will have to have the hero of your clip. Of the analyzed videos, the best results were achieved by are those where a person looks at the camera (51%), followed by those where he/she looks at another person (33%). We will assume that in this second case he can probably "look" at himself/herself in another role.

Primary emotional impressions by the analyzed TikToks are predominantly happiness and surprise (in as many as 82% of the analyzed videos). We will not say anything about how maybe TikTok falls into the trap of toxic positivity, that is a topic for another text, maybe the key here is the need for escapism.

As many as 83% of viral TikToks come from unverified creators, so the algorithm definitely gives everyone a chance to be seen.

As for the genre, the most popular are humorous videos, then those that contain dance, then pets. Certain videos can combine genres, so in case your cat is dancing and doing something funny, your chances to succeed are great. 56% of viral TikToks have music as their primary background sound, but we should keep in mind that this is barely more than half and that the platform started as music-related. So, it is obvious that the influence of the human words and, we will assume, the story that you can tell is growing, which is supported by the prolongation of the video on the platform.

Author of the text: Natalija Jovanović, Senior Content Manager