Anywhere but Tiktok
Tiktok book marketing is booming, but what if you value community and connection over viral reach?
Tiktok is set to be the biggest social networking platform by 2025, and its ability to shift serious numbers of books is undeniable.
But Tiktok’s move to create a ‘viral product’ button under their shop tab suggests they may see themselves more as a future competitor to Google’s search engine, or Amazon’s shop front, rather than a social media platform in the way we currently understand them.
What puts the social in social media?
From the early days of Facebook, social media platforms have leaned heavily on networking and connecting to explain their existence, but Tiktok seems to be moving further away from the notion of community, and ever towards the role that traditional broadcast media has long played in our lives.
In much the same way that Gen X/ Millenials are used to being held at arm’s length by their favourite TV shows, the dominant dynamic between creators and users on Tiktok seems to be that creators create, and users consume. There is little opportunity for connection and conversation when comments are so truncated, and the user is conditioned to scroll past if the creator hasn’t nailed their hook.
The slavish devotion to the three-second attention span cultivated by Tiktok, and reinforced (some might say copied) by Instagram, is an enormous barrier to quality, thoughtful, insightful content getting discovered, which in turn becomes an obstacle to genuine community-building.
So where does community live?
After years of chasing user downloads by playing sticky-fingers with all the other apps’ most desirable features, Instagram declared that 2023 was going to be their ‘year of community’.
Their rollout of a ‘following’ feed for reels - so you see the reels of the people you actually want to see, rather than having your feed algorithmically determined - feels like a small move towards that pledge.
This week has also seen the rollout of Broadcast Channels to UK Instagram users, which Instagram says is borne from their recognition that a more intimate style of communication, in private chats and Whatsapp groups, is what users are demanding. In theory they seem to be suggesting that the ‘behind closed doors’ nature of Broadcast Channels will feed this demand for more direct communication that doesn’t rely on competing for attention.
For now the jury is out, however, as although they are promising more features, Broadcast Channels currently only work in one direction. Account holders are able to ‘broadcast’ to their followers, but their followers not able to reply, so it will be interesting to see where they take this next in their alleged quest to elevate community.
So that, of course brings me to Substack - where else ;-)
I’ll be honest, I’ve found some of the evangelical fervour of some Substack users a little off-putting. In part this was due to Substack’s reluctance to commit to robust moderation as the platform grows (we already know where that ends up so it feels like a dangerous game to play), but also because while the community and conversation aspect of Substack feels like a Village Hall compared to some of the bigger networks’ mega-stadiums, I couldn’t unpack how anyone was supposed to get discovered.
Instagram - for all its ills - has features expressly designed to offer your account discoverability, but while Substack enables users to recommend posts to one another, there hasn’t been a way to discover posts or writers organically for yourself (ergo there wasn’t a way to be discovered).
When I’m working with writers ahead of book publication on how they use Instagram to find their readers, I teach them how to use the features of the platform that enable them to be proactive. They don’t have to wait for someone else to take the initiative.
Whereas so far Substack has felt like the online version of working hard, doing everything right, keeping your head down, and hoping someone will notice.
Until now.
In a recent post Hamish McKenzie (Co-Founder of Substack) said,
‘The most glaring missing piece [of substack] is a giant one.
Discovery.
How does your work get found? How do your stories reach new people? How can you spark conversation outside your existing readership? If you’re a new writer without a pre-existing audience, how can you break out?
This will be a core area of focus for Substack in the months ahead.’
It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone from Substack recognise what has been the glaring chink in their promise to get writers paid for their work. They have been promising independence but in order to get it, writers had to garner sign ups from audiences on the places they were trying to break free from, which doesn’t feel terribly independent.
This has been the main reason why every writer who’s asked me whether they should start a Substack has received a lukewarm response from me. It’s a great place for writers as everyone there is a reader, I would say, before continuing, but how are you going to get people there?
Until now, starting a Substack was, for most people an ‘as well as’, rather than an ‘instead of’, social media such as Instagram, but with this development in the offing, maybe that is about to change.
And I’ll be honest, that’s exactly why I’m (finally) here ;-)
