Does Tiktok follower count actually equate to Fan Loyalty?

Franky Aguilar
4 min readDec 13, 2019

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I’ve heard tons of stories of IG/ Influencer brand endorsement deals reaching anywhere from $2k–15k for a product placed post.

Theres a huge misconception that “followers” = “loyal fans” in this new advertising method of paid content placement.

I wonder if the brands read the comments….

Brands measure product ad success by the number of likes or comments to be seen on a specific post, relying heavily on the cult following of the influencer.

But does this actually equal any real value?
And in the case of Tiktok, how powerful is this VIRAL content driver?

Influencers like the Jenners/Kardashians and just about every person building content around makeup, have really defined what this influencer marketing looks like. The success of these paid campaigns is based on the educational and aspirational aspects of the subject matter.

Makeup!

Where influencers like Kylie, Jeffry Star, and James Charles, have completely pivoted and built beauty empires on likes and comments alone.

After growing my Tiktok following to nearly 50k

— and dialing down on building up my personal brand. I see a ton of people getting famous out of nowhere. But I think there’s something the brands and the platform is potential missing…

Tiktok’s huge driver is the ‘ability to hit viral’ this means that 75% of your content might never reach your actual following.

The ‘FYP’ or ‘For You Page’ is the explore feed, where your content will magically appear and get served to the massive userbase.

So if you hit the algo lotto and pop a couple milli on a few posts. Your content isn’t surfaced to your entire userbase. It is shown to a wave of new users, who might not engage based on the personality, but purely on the content alone.

And since there are no direct CTA, you need to rely on the users following up on their own. YIKES!

Recently I wanted to test this theory, I created a post for a Holiday Giveaway for some hand selected Art Supplies.

The post is simple, to enter this contest all you gotta do is subscribe to my Youtube. The steps of entering the contest are clear and consise. Yet difficult enough that it will take 15–30 seconds of a users time to engage. The post then follows up with “comment done to enter”.

“Youtube needs a lil more time to update”

After 24hrs of launching this campaign I saw a flood of nearly 250 NEW subscribers on Youtube.

Thats pretty amazing! To get this kind of growth from an external social network isn't easy.

The post overall received over 3,000 views with over 250 comments of “done”, and a hot mess of over 400 hearts.

But in comparison to the following I have on tiktok, thats less than 10% in actual views to my 45k following.

So lets look at the analytics.

47% of the post was served to my actual following… 45k?
11% of people were already lurkin my profile
40% hit that viral page (New Eyeballs)

And it looks like the post was watched an AVG of the entire video.
(Dats not easy)

Luckily I’ve positioned by brand to weight heavily on instructional and educational Art material.

This works because the internet is a giant ocean of information. And the content itself will retain higher view engagement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCgcCRjgU7c

My goal now is to really focus on Youtube, where views can equate to paid value (Google Ads). I believe platforms like Youtube, Discord, and Twitch, are more true for fan engagement and loyalty than the IG mobile/social model.

And as Tiktok moves to western maturity, I’m very curious how brands will measure GenZ content engagement with this nuwave of new influencers.

Stay tuned!

tiktok.com/@frankynines
youtube.frankyaguilar.com
twitter.com/frankynines
instagram.com/frankynines_

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Franky Aguilar
Franky Aguilar

Written by Franky Aguilar

Franky Aguilar also known as Frankynines, is an Artist and Content Creator currently working as a Product Design Director in Blockchain.

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