Is Your Pet on TikTok?

by Nancy Hassel, ThisFurryLife.com

If you didn’t know, the past year and a half, you know during the pandemic, one social media platform that has taken off is TikTok.  You may remember hearing it was going to be banned in the US – it was not, and there is an incredible amount of good happening on the platform.

A lot of pet accounts have flocked there – and have grown their audiences into the millions, rather quickly.  Same for some human TikTok influencers as well – who are now full time influencers because of the platform.

TikTok, originally Musical.ly, was an app I had my dog Cody on pretty early on, but Musical.ly was more about lip syncing (from what I could see) and I just did not get the appeal – and mostly it was kids on the app.   So I deleted Cody’s account.

Once TikTok started gaining popularity during the pandemic, of course, my shiny object syndrome with anything social media and pets, kicked in and I made an account for Cody, @CodytheBluenose (he would LOVE a follow!).  And have just been having fun with his account, being creative, showing off his silliness etc.

Cody TT

But of course, videos that take off on TikTok – are usually the ones that you would not think would get millions of views.  And often super short videos, although now you can create up to 3 minute videos.  And the creativity of some TikTok accounts will blow your mind, the app makes it very simple to be creative, tell a story and so on.

You may remember the guy on the skate board drinking cranberry juice last year?  No?  He got millions of views, gifts, a house even I think, and thousands of other TikTokers followed suit recreating their own take of his video, the nature of TikTok with trending videos.

Without getting into all the details of what to do, how to do it, etc., let’s focus on a few pets (and their parents) that are just doing an incredible job on the platform.

@jiffpom – 20.8 million followers

@strkyerthecat  – 8.1 million followers

@WhataboutBunny – 7.0 million followers

@heymynamesluna – 3.0 million followers

@Magnusthetherapydog – 1.5 million followers

@gonetothesnowdogs – 800k followers

The growth of these accounts kind of reminds me when Dogs of Instagram took off years ago, and other top pets on IG.  Oh, and if you noticed IG came out with Reels, basically mimicking TikTok, so you will see a lot of similarities on there.  So if you’re not about creating a TT account, stick with IG and do reels with your pet’s (or pet business) account.

There are many others, and some names that are super familiar if you have been following pet influencers on IG, like Doug the Pug. Some of those accounts grew quickly because they already had a big following on other social platforms like IG.

Personally, I am impressed with the ones that started with zero followers on TikTok and didn’t have big accounts anywhere else and now are massive TikTok pet influencers.  Not knocking any of the others at all, but watching an account go from nothing to millions by being themselves, finding a niche, and just growing because of that is fun to watch.

Is TikTok a trend that will slow down as the algorithm really affect views, probably, like most other platforms, but I don’t think any time soon.  Like all social, consistently posting and creating will help your account grow.

Now you can definitely get sucked into the TikTok rabbit hole and waste a lot of time on the app.  But if you are serious about trying to grow your pet’s account on there, I think watching other videos, seeing what has worked for them and how you can adapt something similar for your pet – could be worth the hours on there.   I would say, set a timer so you don’t get lost in the app (it happens).

One crazy thing about TikTok, is the random videos that come up on your ‘For You’ page, can teach you things you may never have know.  It’s kind of nuts.  Some are really stupid imo, and some things you may be like, “how did I not know that?”  If you know, you know.

Cody’s page is not big, but growing, and while he is stuck at the same amount of followers on IG (for soooo long), his TikTok grew way faster.  I don’t have time to create videos every day for his page, and again – his page is just for fun, testing and learning the platform.   Accounts that have had a hard time on IG, may enjoy TikTok more for their pet.

So if you’re pet is on TikTok –  I would love to know why you started, how it is going and what you are hoping to do with your account.  Click here to tell us! 

 

%d bloggers like this: