Librarian's guide to TikTok - a Power Hour with Bev Humphrey

TikTok is the fastest growing social network in recent years. It has now surpassed Google in the number of visits per month. It is also regarded as an important search engine for students and younger people and has become their ‘go-to’ space when seeking advice or information.While it is currently primarily used by younger people, various subcultures have already grown up, e.g., BookTok, and these are having an effect on business models and impacting ways of working.

TikTok is also increasingly being used to market and promote services and businesses, such as libraries, museums, publishing houses, retail and more.

Most TikTok videos are three-minutes long or less, and this reflects the growing move towards short form visual content on the internet. Consequently, this will affect the ways in which libraries and other information services promote themselves and engage with their communities. This Power Hour will address many of the questions you may have. By the end of the session, you will have learned:

• What is TikTok?

• Who uses it (demographics, usage and growth statistics)

• How is it used

• How authors and publishers are using TikTok

You will also have been shown examples of how libraries are marketing their services on the platform.

This Power Hour will not go into details about creating TikToks but the basic practicalities will be addressed.

About Bev Humphrey

Bev has been a Literacy and Digital Media Consultant for 12 years and was previously a school librarian for ten years. She holds a role of Digital Media and Virtual Training Consultant with the School Library Association, she is a trainer for both Accessit and Accelerated Reader and works closely with several school trusts and companies running their virtual events and producing digital media for them as well as running her own courses on various topics. Bev happily describes herself as a geek and probably spends far too much time each day on social media.