“TikTok: A Path to Stardom… Sort of” delves deep into one of the top social media apps. TikTok has gone beyond just being the “new vine,” becoming a marketing tool, whether for yourself or a product. This package will address going viral on the app and what it means to be a full-time content creator through gifs, an audio documentary, written words, and of course... TikToks.

A special thanks to Kalli Anderson for overseeing the entirety of this package, Kovie Biakolo for editing, and to all those who volunteered to share their experiences with TikTok. 🤍

Meet the Journalist

Hashtags and Sounds and Algorithms OH MY!
How TikTok Has Made Some People “Semi-Famous”

TikTok became popular in March 2020 during a time when many needed an escape from the harsh reality and the overwhelming nature that COVID-19 brought into our lives. But one of its perks? Going viral.

⚠️CONTENT WARNING⚠️
Themes involving anxiety and depression are present.

Accessible Script

This is the full script of the audio documentary including speaker names and links to what's being referenced.

Soft music fades in.

GISELLE MEDINA

Swipe... Swipe, Like... Swipe, Swipe... Swipe, Like, Share...

That’s how I spend most of my time on TikTok.

Soft music fades out.

Right now, it’s my most used app and Apple loves to remind me every Sunday how much time I spend on the app. I hate to admit it, but last week I spent a total of 21 hours and 7 minutes on TikTok. Think of any topic in the world. [PAUSE] Got it? Well, there’s probably a niche “tok” for it. From books to food to even AC units - whatever you’re into - you can find people on TikTok talking about it.

It felt like in March 2020, everyone was on this app. According to Backlinko, a site that tracks SEO trends, Americans 18 and over spent more than a billion hours on the app in March 2020. On average, U.S. adult users were spending 33 minutes per day on TikTok, just two minutes less than Facebook. But that’s just an AVERAGE – a lot of people were spending HOURS a day on the app. I asked some friends to check their phones to see how many hours they logged per week on the app:

BRIANNA FRANCOIS

TikTok is my most used app with a weekly average of just under 12 hours.

TATIANA KRISZTINA

6 hours 36 minutes

ALEXIS NORMANDIA

15 hours

MAURICIO HERNANDEZ

Around 20 hours and 40 minutes.

GISELLE MEDINA

That last one made me feel a bit better about my 21 hour weekly average. With TikTok’s rising popularity, content creators on the app have been racking up huge followings especially during the first COVID-19 lockdown. There was no more rushing to work or school, we were stuck at home waiting for normalcy to come back.

BRYAN MONTANEZ

I had never dealt with anxiety, depression, all that- like mental illness until COVID happened. I let myself go mentally, physically, emotionally in all sorts. And I think TikTok was a fun way of just making an outlet. Um, my videos originally started blowing up when I was just going on rants and talking crazy, and it definitely helped with my emotional state at the time.

GISELLE MEDINA

That was Bryan Montanez. Bryan is originally from Puerto Rico. He moved to Florida at the age of 16, then moved to Missouri for college to play baseball. Now, he lives in Washington Heights pursuing a modeling career with the modeling agency, Next Management. Which all happened after he started posting on TikTok.

BRYAN MONTANEZ

It took me about three months before my first video ever blew up. And I still remember that video the same week that my first video started going crazy on TikTok. Uh, someone by the name of Jhendi Castillo, which is my mother agent Uh, contact me on Instagram and was like, “yo, I'm this and that a mother agent. And there's a client of mine that wants to sign you to his agency.” At first I thought it wasn't real at all. I thought it was like, you know, just the scam or something. And the more I looked into it, the more real it seem.

GISELLE MEDINA

But to stand out, Sammy found that…

SAMMY WROGÉ

...if you have a specific niche on TikTok, you tend to do better rather than posting a bunch of random content because people wanna follow you for like your niche or like what you're interested in.

GISELLE MEDINA

The point here is, just about any topic can make you go viral on TikTok - and it's very hard to predict when it will happen. When it started, TikTok only allowed you to create 15-second videos, so content creators had to grab viewers’ attention quickly. Now, videos can go for as long as 10 minutes. Making a TikTok takes time and effort. Creators have to strategize about when to post their videos. Luis studied his algorithm and he posts exactly at 9:32 P.M.

LUIS BARBOSA

I was like, thinking about myself, like, when am I usually on my phone? If you have like a busy day the next day, or like early classes or whatever, or like, if you're like a kid with a bedtime, you're most likely going to bed around like 10 like 10:30, 11. So, I feel like 9:32 was like a calm spot in between like getting home showering and just like resting in bed and just like being on your phone, like doing nothing. So then I posted like 9:30 and then the video kind of did okay. I posted at 9:32 and then that video did like numbers. Like, um, like I think it did like 4 million, then the next day I pulled out like 9:35, the video did okay. So then I was like, maybe we should just post at 9:32, I post at 9:32 another viral video.

GISELLE MEDINA

To keep that momentum going, content creators have to be consistent.

GISELLE MEDINA

This schedule consists of posting a TikTok a day or something for Instagram. In just a month, she has noticed an increase in views.

But why is TikTok the best app to “blow up” on?

GISELLE MEDINA

The first 500 likes and views are key, then once the video gets to 1,000 it can start to go viral really quickly.

AKINOLA RAYMOND

So it goes of those 500 people more narrowed down and then like it takes them to like they like if like, let's say a 10th of them like it. It'll go to the next batch to a thousand people. That's how you really get viral. Like the first 500 likes you get and then after that it's like depend on how good the video is is pretty much anybody can get viral.

GISELLE MEDINA

I contacted TikTok to request an interview on how their algorithm works and how to gain more recognition on the app. Instead of an interview, their press-person sent me multiple sections of their website. Their “What is the ‘For You’ feed?” page on their website has three videos with tips for going viral.

The tips include adding captions and hashtags … making sure to film vertically … and paying attention to trends … Naturally.

Akinola has found that once a video...

AKINOLA RAYMOND

...goes to 50,000 likes or views, there's like a moderator who looks at the content to make sure like, it's not going to get in trouble.

GISELLE MEDINA

And making sure the video doesn’t go against their community guidelines. TikTok would not comment on whether they pay more attention to content with a lot of engagement. They referred me again to the “What is the ‘For You’ feed?” page and the “Content violations and bans” page on their website. Essentially, the types of things that will get flagged or removed from TikTok include quote “overly erotic” content … anything promoting tobacco products, extreme dieting, or dangerous stunts … and they also flag distressing or violent images.

And to help out with overseeing their content, some creators have managers. Andrea Fernandez is the founder, and CEO of the Transformation PR. She represents multiple content creators, like Dosso Beauty and Dane Richards. Aside from studying TikTok herself, Andrea has someone on her team that researches what’s trending from sounds to videos. With the content creators she represents, Andrea will give points of advice of what she thinks will work for them.

ANDREA FERNANDEZ

If I'm scrolling through social media and I see something that maybe it might not be trending, but I feel like it’s something that has the potential to do really well and the potential to trend, then I'll just hit them up and I'll say, “Hey, like this is something you should look into. It's very on brand with what you do and with your content.” Or like, “This person did this, but I think you could do it better if you like tweak this a little bit and like, this is something that could really hit.”

GISELLE MEDINA

For those who DO manage to go viral on TikTok - it can be life-changing. In the past couple of years, we've seen a bunch of TikTok stars score invites to the Oscars, movie premieres, and things like that. It’s an app that has jump-started people’s acting or modeling careers. Bryan witnessed this firsthand back in 2021 when he did...

It’s Easy To Influence but Is It Easy to Be a Full-Time Influencer?

After almost two years on TikTok, I have come to the conclusion that it can influence me to do anything. I have saved so many TikTok videos on Trader Joe's finds, hair and make-up products, and all the restaurants I want to go to in New York City. Saving these videos has expanded my knowledge and led me to try different things that I otherwise wouldn’t have (I’ve even learned how to make muffins, properly dermaplane my skin, and keep my curls shiny).

Since its rebranding from Musical.ly to TikTok in 2018, the short-form video hosting service has become the most downloaded app in the world surpassing 3.5 billion downloads according to an April 2022 report by analytics firm Sensor Tower. The social media platform has gone from a “dancing app” to a marketing tool for some people. It has had a significant cultural influence specifically among Gen-Z, in this new media generation. Consequently, going viral on TikTok has become a way for people to earn income and even build entire careers.

But Edelman didn’t start off as a full-time content creator. He had a couple of jobs in the past year, with his most recent being the social media manager for a company that had reached out to him because of his TikTok presence. But, he didn’t like the constraints that came with making TikTok videos for a company. According to him, it wasn’t “creative stimulating.”

“I never felt like I had a direction or a clear path of where I wanted to grow, whereas now I feel amazing about where I am and I love my job and there's so many different avenues in terms of growth,” Edelman says. “It's nice to see the work you put in directly reflect. What comes out in 9-to-5 culture, I felt sometimes I'd work really hard and not get recognition, but now working for myself, when I see a video go viral and I did that or like, when I see people responding to something in a positive way, I'm like, that was really good on my part.”

As a full-time content creator, Edelman went from a 9-to-5 job to a 24-hour one. “I film everything I do,” he says. His mornings consist of meetings, filming two videos a day, brainstorming future content, filming ads, replying to comments (either with a video or just a text comment), and going to events.

Usually, Edelman or his manager will send an email introducing themselves and attaching his analytics including his viewership and his audience’s demographic. “Businesses are gonna wanna see if that matches their clientele and the customer that they're trying to reach,” he says.

In her experience, brand deal payments vary from $500 to $5,000 if not more for just one video. This was easy living for Skye three years ago when she lived with her mom. For independence, she moved out, and to sustain her life in North Carolina, she’s gone from full-time content creator to working as a receptionist at a hair salon. With working around 24 hours a week and babysitting during her free time, TikTok has been on the back burner for Skye.

“At one point, I stopped working completely because I was like, ‘I want to do social media, I want to put all my time into this,’ but the brand deals weren't coming in fast enough to pay my bills,” she says. “So right now, I definitely could not pay my bills with social media, like absolutely not because the brand deals have not been as much.”

But as many full-time content creators emphasize, in order to make it your full-time income, consistency is key. In pursuit of this as a full-time career, Skye has a calendar that her manager Sammy Wroge created to gain more follower traction. “We're hoping that I'll start gaining followers again and can actually do more brand deals that are paid.”

Beyond brand deals, there’s the TikTok Creator Fund - the app’s way of “celebrating and supporting creators for their dedication, ingenuity, and spirit,” according to the app’s website. The $200 million fund launched in July 2020 with a seemingly straightforward proposal: apply, make a video, and get money.

However creators have to meet certain criteria in order to apply: they have to be 18 years or older, have a minimum of 100,000 views, have three posts in the past month, have 10,000 followers, and follow community guidelines. However, upon its launch, there were conspiracies alleging that TikTok doesn’t pay their creators and even some people have suggested that creators in the fund have had their viewership go down. The content creator needs views to get the Creator Fund coin. But there is no evidence to prove these claims and TikTok has denied it. “Being in the Creator Fund has no direct impact on the TikTok recommendation system,” TikTok says in their September 2020 statement. “On TikTok, For You feed recommendations reflect preferences unique to each user and the recommendation system doesn't know whether or not a creator is part of the Creator Fund.” In the first place, the statement asserts that TikTok is not deliberately bringing down one’s viewership, a video gets more recognition based on the views and likes the video is gaining. Secondly, the statement also says funds are calculated based on factors like video views, video engagement, and authenticity of a view. Ending their statement with “like video views, funds are therefore dynamic,” meaning that it depends on viewership and is different for each content creator.