By Sydney Schneider
As a Gen Z college student, I’m not embarrassed to admit that TikTok consumes a fair amount of my downtime. If I have a spare couple of minutes before a class or am struggling to fall asleep after an evening spent studying for an exam, I’ll often turn to the social media app as a convenient refuge from the constant stress and overexertion that comes with being a student-athlete in college. Usually, I am greeted by a playful video that consumes mere seconds of my time before I scroll to the next, an endless cycle of content to distract myself from what’s in front of me. Oftentimes, I’ll come across a user reviewing a beauty product or rattling off a list of the best underrated places to travel, both beckoning me to enter down a rabbit hole of consumption. TikTok’s ‘for you page’ is quite literally catered to consumers. With this level of reachability, TikTok presents itself as a potent force within the marketing landscape, changing the way that brands can utilize the app to promote their products and services.
But how?
Through TikTok’s intelligent search engine, users can encounter advice, information, and feedback about virtually anything they are interested in—whether it be an article of clothing, beauty product, hotel, restaurant, or travel destination. Odds are, somebody on TikTok has uploaded a video about it. This type of marketing is both accessible and authentic, catering particularly well to a primarily Gen Z audience.
As an aspiring marketer exploring the worlds of content marketing and social media, I have witnessed firsthand how TikTok has transformed the digital landscape, through both a communications lens and through my own experiences as a consumer.
Here’s how I’ve found TikTok to be a unique bridge between reliability and consumer-driven content.
Reliable Travel Recommendations
I am visiting Maine with my family in August, and none of us are very familiar with the area. Using TikTok, I am able to easily learn about restaurants and must-see attractions from real people, not necessarily influencers or paid spokespeople. And, going even further, users in the comments often corroborate the recommendations mentioned in these videos. If I am interested in finding Maine’s best lobster roll, I can easily turn to TikTok to hear the opinions of people my age. I can always visit Yelp or the Internet to verify my findings, but TikTok users tend to possess trustworthy insider knowledge that may not be as easy to access through other channels.
Authentic Product Reviews
When I was in the market for a tinted moisturizer, I found Internet search results to be much too broad and overwhelming. On TikTok, several users post review-style videos, providing visual try-ons and honest feedback on all of the different tinted moisturizers they’ve tried in years past. Perhaps, through a user on TikTok, I’ll learn that a certain brand’s moisturizer does not provide enough coverage, or doesn’t blend seamlessly into the skin. These types of videos come from honest users with nothing to gain by promoting or shaming certain products. This way, consumers can browse for genuine reviews and feedback on items that they are interested in.
Try-On Hauls
Sometimes, too, TikTok users will post “try-on hauls” of clothing items purchased from a company, which are useful for consumers interested in a garment’s fit, color or anything else that may be difficult to glean from a company’s website. Watching TikTok users try on these products is a bit like going into the store and trying them on yourself, which makes for a much more seamless consumer experience than trying to guess your size and ordering online. Again, because TikTok users are real people, it is easier to find someone with your body type to model a product you might have been eyeing.
For me and many of my peers, this kind of content marketing is more effective than online articles because it is difficult to trust the author of an article if you physically cannot see them or do not know anything about them. To the skeptical consumer, the author might as well have been paid to promote a certain product, especially if they write for a large media outlet. Being unable to see the writer also diminishes the value of their opinion to the consumer, because it is not as credible as seeing real, regular people verify the products you are considering.
TikTok’s advanced algorithm and large pool of user-generated content have made it a powerful platform for marketers to explore and utilize. These features have helped to transform the traditional marketing landscape into one that prioritizes authenticity and accessibility. Marketing professionals should leverage this shift as a tool to inform modern consumers and younger generations.
