This Week at ViralMoment
‘Sup.
Happy ViralMoment Newsletter Day to all who observe! This week, it’s on a Friday, because chaos and also who needs consistency. If you’re new here, welcome to the cool kids club. Each week your inbox will be blessed with some light reads about the hottest viral trends + other trendy TikTok-related tings.
Trend Roundup
This one’s for all you girlies for when they’re not paying attention to you! Not me doing this to my boyfriend last night and then showing him this exact video…
…that he’s talking to other girls? Whether it’s yes or no (because he literally is), creators are airing all their dirty laundry with this one.
Charli D’Amelio wanted to let us know that our thirst traps do not define us!!! And that she’s quirky and weird without makeup too, so she’s just an average gorl. Thanks Charli!
Stir the Pot
Crop, storytime, stfu.
Speaking of Charli, the latest annoyance sweeping TikTok has actually manifested itself in the comments section.
This time, it’s in the form of ‘crop’ and ‘storytime’ requests.
We’ve seen a few of these pop up before, so just a friendly reminder that:
It means nothing. It is spam. You are not missing anything, pinkie promise. And
there’s no need to participate. In fact, please don’t!
Trendsetter Spotlight
It’s giving…SEO.
Good news for advertisers: it appears as though TikTok is beta-testing a rollout of search-based ads. A digital media buyer spotted this on the platform and shared how this would affect the way sponsored content is currently being shared:
For those of us familiar with old-school SEO best practices, this is a whole lot of deja vu. Put simply, this new feature enables marketers target users who have higher buying intent by selectively using highly-searched phrases within a video title.
Then, the ‘sponsored’ content is placed right at the top of the first four tiles when somebody uses one of those phrases to search.
The catch? Figuring out what your target users are actually, unironically, searching for. Unlike all the dinosaurs still relying on Google Search (no offense, you are still very special ❤️,) lots of TikTokers have somewhat of their own language for communicating across the platform. And frankly, a lot of it is sarcastic and makes no logical sense – hence above, crop, storytime.
The good news is, we’re working on something that will solve that exact problem – and it’s launching next week.
Calling everyone who works with social data!
Our friends at The Social Intelligence Lab launched a research study to better understand how social data impacts decision-making and they asked us to share it with y’all. It’s quick, anonymous, and helps all of us in the industry understand our business a little better.
Plus, they’re giving out the chance to win a $150 gift card for participating so you can potentially #treatyoself.
P.S. If you’ve been reading for a while, we appreciate you. A lot.
We’ve got lots of updates coming up so as we roll those out, we’d love to hear from you about how we’re doing!
You can always reply to this email with your thoughts + if there’s anything you’d want us to write about in this newsletter.
Or if we’re being annoying. Or if you want to procrastinate and get into a debate with another internet person, we’re here for that too.
See ya next week!