Well here’s good news, TikTok is trying out new ways to further boost engagement on the platform by testing a new option that allows you to tag other profiles in your videos and clips. On paper, it sounds pretty neat, but how exactly would this pan out? Isn’t it similar to the ‘Mention’ feature that’s prevalent on Instagram Stories?
One of our fave socmed guys, Matt Navarra, posted an example that shows the new option and how it’ll work. In addition to the existing ‘Mention’ function (@mention), the new option would enable users to keep their captions text-free of mentions, while simultaneously prompting tagged profiles to alert them about your clip/s.
It’s more of a side-grade really; an improvement of an already existing function at best and, while it technically doesn’t add anything new, it does provide another, more integrated means to link to other creators and profiles. At the very least, it further promotes and emphasizes the community-centered format of TikTok, greatly hinting at the potential to significantly boost engagement once the option actually goes live. In line with the platform’s eCommerce push, it provides brands with another way of boosting their community engagement, by enabling them to alert top supporters and/or creative partners about their latest uploads.
Since TikTok is known to foster collaborations more effectively than other platforms, which it continues to do and further develops up to this day, the new option, in a way, also contributes to the deepening of collaborative efforts among creators and partners by essentially allowing them to silently tag each other, alerting both about any latest uploads from either one. Going further into further prospects, the new option can also aid in the planning of campaigns and content by essentially introducing an avenue in which partners can opt to do series-type uploads, bridging each’s audiences and respectively increasing the engagement and reach of both.
Another beneficial area where the new option could potentially shine is when you post listings. Say, for example, you have a list of TikTok profiles that had previously asked you questions about a particular offer that you have; you would then be able to specifically tag them to future uploads that would or could answer their queries. It helps add a little personal flair to your responses, almost as much as it does for your TikToks themselves.
Again, while the @mention function is not something new, this new option virtually ‘makes it better’, at least in an integrative way. This update won’t really ‘add’ anything tangibly new to TikTok, but will function as a streamline of existing processes that makes platform interaction that much smoother and, to an extent, more relevant.
The Wrap
TikTok had always focused on ‘keeping it real’, with update upon update aiming to make content creation and sharing more seamless and natural. Banking on its current popularity and innate strengths, TikTok effectively makes use of its own cultural nous to determine what else it can improve on, if not add. Perhaps learning from Instagram’s example, TikTok wishes to reduce or at least prolong the pile-up of ‘clutter’ as a result of having too many features and functions.
Either way, it looks to be an element that’s at least worth trying out. Though mainly in testing right now, hopeful we get to see it enter it’s beta-release stages sometime during the earlier parts of 2022.
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