From the editor:

This blog is the final part of a four-part TikTok exposé brought to you by FearWorm in conjunction with our client Fear Factory SLC. Chris Strebel, their Media Director, has had wonderful success with this new, exciting social platform. FearWorm is proud to bring this information to our industry.

If you missed Part 3, read it here first.

Take it away, Chris! 

Going Viral on TikTok

Viral is defined as – relating to or involving an image, video, piece of information that can be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another. 

Many of us in the marketing world have that dream of going viral on social media or having a press story go so viral it’s picked up all over the world. When it happens, you’re excited and proud of the content that you and everyone involved created. 

If I have learned anything from the app, you honestly don’t know what is going to catch that viral wave. I have had two videos go viral both in very different ways and in different parts of the world. The first video I can explain it like this. If you have a feeling that you’re sitting on some “good content” when you have the following factors, is it relatable? Does it spark a reaction out of people? Does it invoke an emotional response or even a reaction while they watch it? I feel like if you can answer YES to each one of these along with piecing together a story that you may have a winner on your hands. 

But, again we had a video go viral which is now over 2.6 million views, one I thought wouldn’t go viral was our Vampire Friendsgiving video. Of course, I did shoot these several ways, and with different takes, outcomes, lighting, and so on.  Picking the best one I thought was the best for the video. It wasn’t until about a week later that it was taking off, and we were gaining more views, likes, and followers.

If you haven’t gone viral, that’s ok give it time like I said you honestly couldn’t predict which video of yours is going to go viral. But you need to be posting, and participating in those hashtags, popular sounds, or creating your own. That’s going to help you in your journey to going viral.

How does the algorithm work?

The algorithm is one part that will help determine if your video will hit viral status. Along with the great content you have created and or if you used either a trending hashtag, filters, or more. 

When a video is uploaded, TikTok will show your video to a few hundred users, among other popular videos. Next, the algorithm will measure how much engagement your videos have received, and this will be through video views, likes, shares, comments, and downloads. The algorithm will know that it should continue to serve your video to more users. 

One user by the name of @kinkhieu in 2019 created a video showing a visual representation of the algorithm and how it works. I suggest saving this and watching it a few times so you can better understand the algorithm.

Understanding TikTok Analytics

Remember from earlier when I said set up a Pro account. I would recommend when you start, you start out pushing as much content as you can so you can start building your analytic profile.

The top three categories once your Pro account is ready it’ll be on your screen:

• Overview – This gives you an overall account view.
• Content – Here you can see your most recent video post in the last seven days and what is currently trending out of all your videos in the last seven days 
• Followers – This allows you to see how many followers you currently have, your gender split by percentage, top territories, follower activity, sounds they are listening to, and videos your followers have watched

If we dig further into one particular post, the content analytics offer the ability to track specific data:

• Total like count on the post
• Total number of comments
• Total number of shares
• Total playtime of the video
• Total number of video views
• The Average watch time
• Traffic source types
• Audience territories

When we view all the information alongside the top territories in the follower’s tab under audience territories, if one post did exceptionally well in any given location, it should become an easy decision to continue to deliver that same type of posts. But if you notice a dip in engagement, you’ll know it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Harness a third party with Pentos

TikTok’s platform is terrific for just focusing on your data. BUT what about seeing how trending hashtags are doing, or even your own branded hashtags. What about your competitors? How about getting insights into popular influencers you may want to collaborate with down the road.

Click Here to go to Pentos Website. 

Registering for an account is free. Pentos gives you access to three accounts. For added function and more in-depth analytics, they offer two other tiers with subscriptions starting at $20/month. Below is a look at what our analytical data looked like as of 02/27/2020.

Next, you can see how our branded Hashtag is doing as of 02/27/2020. Remember, when I said, “Make sure you set up your branded hashtag first?” This is one of the reasons why. By using the Hashtag, users can search for your content this way. The sooner it becomes second nature in all of your posts and other social media platforms, the easier it’ll be to search and find your content.

Looking to the Future

As we move toward the future, we have set some goals to be at 100k followers by August 31st, 2020. On 02/27/2020, we passed 75k followers, so another 25k by the end of summer is possible. I have set a goal to gain a total of 160k followers by the end of the haunting season.

4/29/2020 Update: Our goals were quickly achieved with our latest viral video: https://vm.tiktok.com/vxxdd6/. On 2/29/20, we passed our 160k follower goal, a goal I initially set to be at by the end of the 2020 season. We look forward to seeing what the coming season brings us.

We are excited to be apart of a new community in which haunts can interact, challenge one another, and create some amazing content together.

Haunt Ads on TikTok

One final piece I am looking forward to is the integration of ads on TikTok. Currently, right now, ads are provided to big-name brands with big budgets. I’m hopeful, in 2020, we’ll see their ads platform move out of beta and become open to other businesses. These are the types of ads TikTok currently offers:

• Brand Takeovers

These are the first ads you see when you open up the app. You can choose to redirect to an internal or external link. Currently, this ad model is only offered to one advertiser per day.

• In-Feed ads

Native ads can either be found near the bottom of an organic video. Or within the feed of the For You page depending on the type of product. These also redirect to your website and usually cost $10per CPM. Making this type of ad more affordable.

• Hashtag challenges

Partner with TikTok’s marketing team, and they’ll help you create a sponsored hashtag challenge that’ll encourage users to share your content on your brand’s behalf. Typically they’ll last for 6 days. 

I hope to be able to return and tell you more about TikTok and how ads have helped us grow, what challenges we have done, and much more.

In conclusion,

The best way to understand TikTok is to explore it and find what works for you and your haunted attraction. My advice: Don’t wait to download this app. Don’t look at this as one more app you need to manage and worry about, instead use this app as a way to help generate video content for other channels. Remember, in today’s marketing video is king.

Show off some new construction get some hype through teasers, maybe get a few monsters made up and show a timelapse, make a video for an upcoming holiday or event you are doing.

I look forward to the different challenges we can challenge one another with, Duets and even getting some Key Characters from our haunts to start getting together as other creators have recently done. 

Should you have any questions, I am always available; I can be reached through our main Facebook page at Fear Factory SLC or my profile here. 

And most of all, Follow us on Tiktok at Fear Factory SLC or on any of our social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter & Youtube) as we’re posting different content to each platform too. Likewise, we’d love to follow other haunted houses, actors & vendors from our industry as you create your accounts.