TikTok as a Marketing Tool for Adult Sites and Performers
TikTok is a social media site that is becoming more and more well-known. TikTok, which was created by a Chinese internet firm, has wreaked havoc on American popular culture. It is both a welcoming forum for people from all backgrounds and also intrinsically divisive. Despite this, independent producers and those who create explicit content have used TikTok to sell their products and services to a larger group of young people between the ages of 18 and 32. This blog post explains how TikTok marketing may increase users and conversions for independent performers and adult website owners who aren’t already on the network.
What is TikTok?
TikTok is a Chinese-developed social networking site, as we’ve already explained. TikTok, as opposed to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, offers short bursts of visual content like videos and snippets that cover a range of genres. The app distinguishes itself by engaging users and keeping them interested by providing customized feeds of amusing short videos that are accompanied by music and sound effects. Both novice and expert content producers can edit their movies using filters, background music, stickers, and more. They can also make split-screen duet videos even if they are in separate locations. Given the app’s prominence, corporations, and creators of all kinds, including those in the adult entertainment industry, use TikTok in remarkable ways that should be regarded seriously.
TikTok is a platform for communication that is used by news organizations, retail stores, software firms, government agencies, social media influencers, models, singers, dancers, musicians, comedians, political figures, and more. Given the nature of video and the increased platform accessibility, TikTok influences cultural and political dialogues as much as Twitter does, if not more.
How Popular is TikTok?
TikTok began operating in the US market a few years ago, according to research by investing news and information provider Investopedia. Based on data collected in September 2021, statistics given in the analysis show that there are one billion active monthly users globally. It is anticipated that there are about three billion downloads worldwide, with a significant portion of those users choosing to spend billions both on the company itself and the brands and businesses that utilize it as a marketing tool.
According to social media marketing agency Social Shepherd, TikTok has currently been downloaded more than 3.5 billion times worldwide. This is the fifth application to achieve this objective; the others are part of a family of apps made for platforms owned by Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. TikTok’s user base increased considerably because of the COVID-19 epidemic, making it a social staple in wealthy nations around the world, including the United States, during quarantines. An increase in users between the ages of 18 and 24 is noteworthy, especially given that many of these users are from this age range and have been using the social network since they were minors and are now of legal age.
How Do Adult Entertainment Professionals Use TikTok?
Professionals in the adult entertainment industry can use TikTok by following certain extremely specific procedures. The application contains a lot of sexually explicit and suggestive material. However, TikTok’s terms and conditions are comparable to those of other social networking platforms like Instagram, which is a popular photo-sharing platform owned by Facebook and Meta, nudity and sexual content are not permitted on TikTok. But as we’ve seen, plenty of adult entertainers and online sex workers have managed to get around these restrictions by uploading teasers and videos of scantily clad models partaking in the newest lip-syncing craze or playing out an internet joke.
How Some Adult Creators Use TikTok
The model who goes by Stormigee or Storm for the remainder of this case study is one creator who has successfully used TikTok to acquire a following of over 4.5 million people and around 135 million likes on her videos. The “Whora the Explorer” comedic NSFW clip series by Storm has become very popular on TikTok. Storm films herself running around in pink tube tops and high heels getting herself into absurd situations to what she claims a “whore” would get into, based on the animated series “Dora the Explorer” that originally aired on Nickelodeon for years and became a live-action film franchise for family audiences. You don’t have to agree with the message, but just from these TikTok videos, Storm has racked up millions of views. She has also shared videos on her page that make fun of living next to an adult film celebrity or other performer. While Storm addresses NSFW material in these clips, she complies with TikTok’s rules of service by not exposing any portion of her body that is nude. She does, however, provide a direct link to her “vanilla” Instagram account, which contains a list of her other social media networks and websites, including her paid OnlyFans account.
Since TikTok’s terms of service forbid linking to websites for people aged 18 and older, Storm has made use of the widely used “link-in-bio” services that let adult creators publish all of their NSFW and SFW content indirectly but openly. Link-in-bio services are still extensively used even though TikTok has already cracked down on them.
What Other Adult Creators Say
During our investigation for this blog post, we came across other case studies, such as the testimonies of adult cam models who utilize TikTok as a marketing tool. Two models with large TikTok followings, Vicky Plush and Aerie Saunders, told YNOT Cam that using the platform can be beneficial provided content providers are prepared to take a chance. Vicky Plush advised Alison Sparks, another adult cam model, that “it’s a good idea to be active, funny, and showing probably something outside the sex work that you enjoy so the people can get interested in what you do and started supporting you.” You may affect how content moderators and TikTok’s algorithms discover the actual types of material that are being advertised by combining more subtle marketing techniques, Plush and Saunders said. For creators who also use TikTok, FapHouse, an alternative to OnlyFans and a clip store owned by the same business group as xHamster.com, offers a TikTok page. Although not all adult-related businesses are as transparent on TikTok, many celebrities do.
Algospeak
According to the technology news site Lifehacker, algospeak is a language made up of obscure phrases and emojis that may be comprehended with the appropriate context clues, preventing adult content creators from deleting their own work. To convey these signals to users, an algospeak vocabulary has emerged among the NSFW communities of TikTok, including the use of link-in-bio services and OnlyFans models referring to themselves as “accountants.”
Adult Only Livestreams & New Parental Controls
TikTok made the announcement that users must be 18 years of age or older to utilize the app’s live streaming features in November, sparking uproar from parents and socially conservative anti-porn groups. Prior to this, 16-year-olds could live stream. This regulation was accompanied by several new features that completely revamp TikTok’s parental controls and security measures in order to remove NSFW content from the feeds of users under the app’s legal drinking age (18 years). The development of “adult only” live streams, which let older audiences see edgier and spicier content from their favorite producers, including adult models who use TikTok to advertise their premium accounts, x-rated cam shows, and clip stores, was part of this initiative. Sexual activity and nudity remain illegal.
Be Aware of TikTok’s Direct and Indirect Factors
To sum up, it’s critical to go into more detail about the difficulties of using TikTok. Adult Business Consulting is not attempting to prevent adult producers and companies from using the TikTok app as a possible marketing tool in any way. Instead, we want to emphasize that there are a few considerations to make if you decide to use TikTok as a marketing tool. The same cost-benefit analysis would be conducted for every other social media network, such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Snapchat.
To begin with, TikTok is a political football. Politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties see TikTok as a national security threat, particularly in the United States. Since ByteDance, a Chinese technology company, created TikTok, the frequently right-leaning national security establishment fears that Chinese intelligence agencies could use TikTok to spy on the millions of Americans who use the app daily to consume content. Donald Trump, the outgoing Republican president from 2016 to 2020, claimed that the Chinese government was snooping on American users through the app and ordered that it be taken out of the country’s digital culture unless certain criteria were met. These requirements include that TikTok’s domestic operations be split off into a corporation run by American executives and that the local user base’s data be stored on servers under the management of an American multinational tech giant like Oracle.
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