How TikTok became the most used app in the world in a short span of time?

You've seen Tik Tok promoted everywhere and possibly use it yourself but did you ever stop to think how this simple Chinese video app suddenly took over the world you see if you're like me who dismissed Tik Tok it's just a cringy app for kids lip syncing and dancing you're wrong . In less than a decade ,Byte dance have gone from a four-bedroom apartment in china where the electricity kept cutting out to becoming a global empire that is shaping not just social media but technology, politics and much much more. The inside story of how it happened is incredibly inspiring and fascinating.

Byte dance is an app factory whilst Tiktok is by far their most successful app when the company launched in 2012 they created 12 different apps within just a few months .The company's founder Zhang Yi Ming always had big plans he was inspired by business magnates like Steve Jobs and had a dream of one day building a global company that was as border less as Google. This was an even more ambitious goal than it sounds because china essentially operates a separate internet to the rest of the world big platforms we all know like YouTube and Facebook are banned in china and likewise internet companies that start in china almost never manage to take their services worldwide so Zhang knew that to defy the odds and build a global empire, Byte dance needed to think bigger with the apps they were creating. Here are the techniques they used to become the most used app in the world -

1.??????The powerful algorithm

it's unique because it isn't built around your social network you don't have to friend follow subscribe or even search for anything you just open the app start swiping and the algorithm will get better and better at understanding which videos to show you and because you consume so many short videos in just a few minutes it gives the algorithm so much data about what content you do and don't like you could watch a hundred videos in a single session as opposed to something like youtube where you may only watch a small handful and since you're not reliant on your social circle for content you'll never run out of interesting videos to watch you're just one flick away from something totally random. New psychologists have found parallels between this and the effect of playing a slot machine in a casino so when you combine that with the never-ending scroll effect which tricks our brains into not knowing when to stop using the app it's easy to see why people get sucked in. Byte dance even added a feature where when you press the back button it shows you a new video you have to double tap the button to actually get out of the app.

You just lose track of time whilst you're on there you open this app you start swiping and before you know it three hours of your life is gone and you've achieved basically nothing now we're gonna look back at the effects of what that does to the brain what effect does that have on the rest of your life

2.??????Getting Users on board with lowering entry barrier

However was Byte dance had no problem getting people to watch their new video app they knew that an addictive algorithm was useless if they didn't have enough people creating videos. They launched a genius plan to get creators on board by lowering the barrier to entry. Competition on social media had become tough filming simple selfie videos was no longer enough to blow up on YouTube you needed to learn how to use editing software create thumbnails and countless other things which made it difficult for young new creators to get started. So Byte dance made posting videos ridiculously easy with built-in editing functions in the app you could even apply filters and add music to make the video immediately seem way more professional and interesting

3.??Challenges

If you remember the viral ice bucket challenge in 2014 well so did Byte dance they realized that if they created challenges within the app that were easy for people to replicate like a certain Dance. People didn't even have to think about original creative content. They could join in by just doing the challenge.

4.??????Give them a taste of fame

If you look on any social media forums, you'll find plenty of people complaining about how hard it is to beat the algorithm with YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. In stark contrast you'll find plenty of people raving about how easily their Tik-Tok videos blew up I literally gained like a million followers in about the space of like six weeks basically a Byte dance realized that by sharing the love around a lot of creators they'd attract way more people wanting to make videos for the app. It was like a new gold rush for everyone who had gotten late on other social media you could join Tik Tok and on your first video rack up millions of views. By giving creators a dose of fame and a hit of dopamine, it encouraged them to recruit more people to the app by telling their audience to come and follow them on tech talk

5.??????Bringing Influencers/ Known Persons to post Content

Byte dance started to notice a bit of a problem making the barrier of entry so low meant they got an equally low quality of content they had plenty of people posting videos but a lot of it was just kids lip-syncing or dancing to songs so then came step four of the plan bribe the top talent. Byte dance messaged creative influencers with big followings on other platforms and offered to pay them to come and post on their app. They also reportedly went to art schools to find good-looking creative students and promised to make them famous. Once they'd attracted some higher quality content they manipulated the algorithm to make sure it got a lot of views to try and improve people's perceptions of how good the content on the app was/

6.??????Nurture Relationships with the Creators

They assigned the top creators, account managers who would sometimes even help them with school assignments and relationship issues to make sure the users were able to create lots of content. The more you use Byte dance's apps the more the algorithm learns about you which means you get served even better content recommendations which means you use the app more. This creates a never-ending cycle of improvements as a result very few people wanted to switch to any of these competitor apps that popped up.

They also paid top influencers from Facebook and YouTube to come and post on Tik Tok instead or pouring billions of dollars into running ads on Facebook and YouTube. So they literally siphoned off users from your competitors.

7.??????Allowing and Pushing users to post Tiktok videos on other sites

They initially encouraged users to share their Tik Tok videos on other social media. It sounds strange at first why would Tik Tok want to make it easy for people to repost take talks on Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and so on.

It was a simple idea because every Tik Tok video contains a watermark in the corner promoting their app. I'm willing to bet that even if you've never downloaded Tik Tok in your life, you've seen a video with the Tik Tok watermark it's the ultimate free publicity. Tik Tok had made it so much easier to create content thanks to the in-app editing functions so people will create videos on tik-tok then go and post them on all their other social media giving Tik Tok endless free marketing. The Byte dance team would even make fake accounts on other social media themselves and just repost lots of the best tik tok videos. They knew that if you see that Tik Tok watermark enough eventually you'll go and download the app yourself

8.??????Running Ads strategically

Bytedance used to run ads too. They initially targeted highly populated cities with low CPMs like some of the poorest cities in India. This got them a lot of downloads quickly and cheaply which shot the app to the top of the app store, thus attracting lots of free publicity. Once TikTok had some momentum they targeted micro influencers with 5 to 10k followers on other social media and promised to make them stars on Tik Tok if they started posting content on the app/

Many of these influencers were frustrated by the slow growth on other social media so they gladly made the switch to Tik-Tok then Tik-Tok stepped it up they began targeting big influencers like those with 1 million followers and above by offering them big cash payments to come and post on Tik-Tok.

9.??????The pandemic and people being at home

Tik-Tok was becoming the place to be with even celebrities now voluntarily joining the app. Despite all of this marketing we've just talked about perhaps the biggest reason for Tik-Tok sudden growth was something completely out of their control - the pandemic and people being at home

Locked at home with not much else to do, Tik Tok became the go-to app. Kids even got their parents using it and doing challenges together Tik Tok's growth had already been explosive but the pandemic just added fuel to the fire. It’s reported that during lockdowns the average Tik Tok user opened the app eight different times every day. Suddenly Tik Tok was on a faster growth trajectory than YouTube and TikTok’s international expansion had gone unimaginably well