My digital artefact is a series of Tik Tok videos. I had previously started watching videos on ‘Tik Tok’, a rapidly growing app containing short looping videos, much like ‘vine’ a popular app in 2013 and enjoyed its addictive. I hoped to make a series of videos trying out popular trends on the app whilst also dabbling in making my own trends. In attempting to try as many features of Tik Tok as possible, I gained a significant audience and the results of my DA were astonishing.  Here is a starter pack I made:

Based on research, I discovered users of Tik Tok ranged from ages as low as 6 and upwards. They seemed to enjoy dry, bold humour, lip syncing and scenarios as some examples. My first video used lip syncing and humour. Ironically, the Tik Tok was based on doing my digital artefact for university. After analysing the age, gender and location of my audience, I then devised a plan, this plan consisted of targeting my major audience, young girls aged 7-18 in the United Kingdom. Much to my planning, my videos gained significant viewing from this specific audience and my videos were semi successful.

Before reaching my final idea, I had an unsuccessful attempt of a plan. My previous idea was a Youtube series called “How to: from someone who can’t do” were I’d take part in several activities that I couldn’t do, and whilst doing so I would try and teach the audience ‘how to’. The idea was funny however the layout and production of my first video was a failure. The video received a mere 80 views and I only received 7 subscribers overall.

After lack of my Youtube series got, I turned to Tik Tok. Tik Tok taught me that relevant content now must be relatable, not long winded and straight to the point, unlike my Youtube channel. If I continued onwards my Youtube channel, the mantra FEFO: Fail early, fail often, would have followed my DA until the end. Editing and uploading Youtube was undeniably stressful as well as time consuming, once again opposing Tik Tok.

  I uploaded my first Tik Tok almost immediately after changing my DA. The video went viral overnight and now has over 300k views, along with a second video which has 200k views. My page has the equivalent of half a million views all together, nearly 7000 followers and 140k likes.

The success of my page grew from what I learned about the ‘for you’ page. By hash tagging “#foryou” on your videos, your video may go on a page which can be viewed by all users. Two of my videos went on the For you page immediately, the view count on them virtually doubling in seconds.

From what I learned on both platforms, Youtube and Tik Tok, gave insights on how viral content is produced. Whether through trends or funny content, luck is also entailed in uploading content. I thoroughly enjoyed creating my  Digital artefact and hope to make more content into the future.