Even if you are really talented, getting noticed always comes at a cost. Sometimes you just have to pay your way to success. Big corporations across all industries spend million-dollar chunks of their revenue on marketing and public relations campaigns to build brand recognition and loyalty. So if you want to play the popularity game, there’s no shame in paying a few bucks for a few thousand views to get the ball rolling. Here we’ll go over a few hacks to buy in for nothing more than a fistful of dollars.
To Buy or Not to Buy…?
Buying views, likes, hearts and other forms of web traffic on any social media platform is the norm when you pay for ‘advertising’ and exposure. The social media marketing business model is an effective way to promote all types of business. It’s affordable for individuals and highly effective, compared to conventional forms of advertising, because you can target a very specific audience demographic with a tailor-made campaign to suit your budget.
TikTok takes off
The TikTok app for making and uploading short music videos for the social network was the most downloaded app in the first quarter of 2018, bursting ahead of other social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram.
The slapstick antics of TikTok’s 800 million users generated $115.3 million from user spending in 2019. The video-making app came out of China in 2012 but lurked backstage before really bursting onto the scene in 2018.
The platform is popular with advertisers because its quick clips of lip sync, dance and inventive tomfoolery are entertaining and addictive, and used by a diverse demographic, from tweens to pensioners.
About half of Tiktok’s users only watch other people’s videos, spending about 40 minutes a day flicking through the 6 – 15 second clips, now available in 150 markets and 75 languages. The other half are regular uploaders.
The 15-second time limit ensures the uploaded videos are small files which can be easily shared. It also forces uploaders to be highly creative; polishing and editing their videos before uploading. As a result, creative home movie makers are becoming influencers with millions of followers and teaming up with high profile advertising agencies.
Top-ranking TikTok influencer Lauren Gray has more than 34.8 million followers at last count.
Hashtag Challenges
Hashtag challenges is one of the promotional techniques used by brands on TikTok, which now gets a staggering billion views a day – easily achieved when you can buy TikTok followers for
$5- 7 for anywhere from 150 to 7,500 likes and followers from your target audience – and cheap enough for anyone to jump on board the promotional bandwagon.
The #RaindropChallenge for example got over 986 million views.
Buy Direct Targeted Web Traffic
An alternative to buying followers on TikTok which is slightly more expensive but well within most individual’s budgets is to buy targeted traffic, which can get you anywhere between 10,000 visitors for about $80 up to half a million visits for about $2,000.
The added bonus when buying web traffic is that you send visitors directly to your website without having to jump through hoops of political correctness on mainstream social media platforms, and you can target audiences in your specific niche and country.
Like most mainstream social media, TikTok’s rules insist on clean content. Nudity and cursing are not allowed but with a usership predominantly made up of trendy teens and 20- to 30-year olds, some videos verge on being only for discerning adults.
If your web content is strictly for over 18s, you’ll have to invest in an adult website traffic plan to get your likes and views, instead of buying visitors through mainstream social media channels.
The Fight Against ‘Fake News’
Over the years, all social media platforms seem to go the same way. Many launch as “alternative” platforms which claim to value diverse creator content but as their popularity grows, so do the pressures to conform to mainstream political correctness.
Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have all come under fire and become embroiled in controversy for appearing to support certain political views or for not toeing the party line.
Many conspiracy theorists began their truth-seeking journeys going through free videos on YouTube but a lot has changed in recent years with ever tightening controls on content creators, forcing them to go with alternative monetized platforms such as BitChute.
David Icke is the latest victim of YouTube’s increasingly draconian policies. After years of speaking his mind on many controversial topics, his entire channel was deleted during a live stream.
YouTube does allow content creators to upload adult-oriented content with cursing or material which could be offensive but doing so makes monetization difficult as you have to verify whether your videos are specifically for kids, or for adults, or exclusively for over 18s.
If you upload and check the boxes for adult content, monetization is automatically restricted but if you upload a video that doesn’t follow the community guidelines and neglect to inform YouTube, your video will soon be removed.
No doubt the current social media trends will be vastly different a year from now as some platforms plateau while others rise and fall like ancient empires.