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TikTok creators Seb and Monty have both carved out niches for their content on the platform
Using genre to guide your content is key to ensuring it stands out according to TikTok creators Sebb and Monty, who talk The Drum through how to get the most out of the platform.
‘What am I looking at here?’ It’s not an unusual question for the first-time TikTok user, given the bewildering array and amount of content to be found on the app.
Each of the now-dominant social platforms have seen the advent of new types of content, developed as the platforms themselves were populated and adapted by users. YouTubers normalized monologuing to webcams; activists on Twitter began ‘live tweeting’ developing debates or news stories, leading to the creation of threads; destination-hopping Instagrammers began using their profile grids as photographic travel essays shot on smartphones.
Despite the fact TikTok has only been around since 2018, it has already seen new genres bloom (viral dance videos, comedy lip-syncing, the many beauty and fashion-oriented transformation trends...) as users feel out and adapt to the platform’s limits and capabilities.
The most popular genres on the platform reflect its youthful audience, but also its emphasis on replication. Viral trends function like video memes, repeating camera angles or audio samples, meaning that short-form comedy and dance videos thrive. Sports content evokes the rapid-fire format of highlight reels, while beauty content gets boiled down to the bare essentials – sped-up tutorials leading to a final transformation.
For involved users, TikToks are easy to read and easy to recreate, so barriers to entry for those wanting to join in the fun (or burnish their follower count) are low. As former R/GA and soon-to-be Twitch strategist Jack Appleby puts it, the easily parsed genre groupings are part of the platform’s “secret sauce”. “It’s almost a coloring book for content. See a trend, participate in trend, get enjoyment from creating something more than typical social and being part of community, eventually make original content,” he tweeted.
According to Monty and Sebb, using genre to guide your content can help attract new followers and a wider audience. “Joining in with trends on TikTok is a good way to grow your following,” says Sebb, whose follower count rapidly increased from 50,000 to 400,000 after he began posting make-up transformations on the back of the popular ‘clown check’ trend, which saw TikTokkers cut between camera shots of themselves transformed into spooky entertainers.
“It blew up,” he recalls. “Now I’m known for doing transformations on clothes. It’s very important to be remembered for doing a specific thing rather than just following a trend.”
Engaging with TikTok’s genres and trends can help a creator develop a niche of their own. Monty says: “When you have a niche, it’s a good way to individualize yourself and show your personality.”
And for Sebb, it’s all about “seeing what works for other creators, then putting your own spin on it”. As an example, he says: “I do a lot of hair transformations, with lots of different colors. People love that, so I stick to doing that a lot – obviously as much as I can without killing my hair.”
Sebb points out that creators often mix trending audio with their regular content, allowing them to engage with a given genre or passing trend from within their niche. “Soon enough you find a niche that you can take into any trend. So I’ll use trending audio with a clothing transformation – it’s my aesthetic, but I’m still doing the trend.”
Similarly, Monty dug out a niche for himself joining in with dance trends – despite his inability to keep up with the moves – as a way for him to engage with both comedy and dance audiences. “Whenever there’s a good dance trend, I’ll join in but always change it up. Maybe to match it to my niche, or perhaps I can’t do it so I’ll make it easy for myself.”
As with other media, TikTok’s genres have evolved alongside the platform’s own development. Voiceovers, for example, were a popular content niche, but truly caught on with users once the company added a feature allowing users to easily mix their own video with another audio source from within the app’s native tools. Tellingly, when the company released its voiceover tool, it explained its utility by reminding users of its pedigree in genre cinema, pointing to Ray Liotta’s drawl in gangster classic Goodfellas.
Monty says he managed to add the tool and the genre it enabled to his arsenal. “Voiceovers were already a thing when the feature was released, but I made them in a daily vlog style and made them as funny as I could, and that set mine apart from the rest,” he says.
Sebb, meanwhile, adopted one particular audio sample as a personal signature, deploying the chorus of Britney Spears’s Boss Bitch across several of his hair transformations. “My fans say it’s my sound, that I’m the CEO of using that song,” he says.
As TikTok’s multitude of genres has grown, so have the communities around them, from the alternative spirituality of Witchtok to the weird viral humor of ‘frog TikTok’ and the rustic aesthetic known as cottagecore. The more mainstream and youth-oriented pillars represented by Monty and Sebb have, inevitably, begun to attract attention from brands keen to get in front of that 18- to 25-year-old market.
The brands using TikTok most effectively at the moment line up neatly with the most popular genres of content on the platform. According to a report from content marketers Digital Loft, the biggest brands on the platform were those from the worlds of sports, entertainment and beauty, including the NFL, Fortnite, Netflix, Huda Beauty and Red Bull.
For Sebb and Monty, brands needn’t be coy about getting stuck in. “Those clown check videos are really about makeup... makeup brands could easily pop up to me and ask me to use their stuff,” suggests Sebb. “It’s the same with hair-dyeing videos for hair dye brands.”
Some brands have even managed to develop communities around fan love for their products. Both creators point to cosmetics brand Dr Jart, which enjoyed a boost when its Shake & Shot beauty masks became a favorite of TikTokkers in the US. Almost all the videos use the same format – showing the creator mixing and applying the mask’s gooey-but-satisfying aggregate before peeling it off their face for a reveal shot. A video featuring Sebb and Monty trying out one of the masks netted the pair a cool 400,000 likes.
While enthusiasm as fierce as that is rare for a product, it’s an encouraging sign – and a potential case study – of how a brand can join in with an existing genre of content on the platform.
