Written by Anna Zaslavska, copywriter at Writitude
I have seen “the end of text” proclaimed countless times with the arrival of each new medium.
First, it was radio, then television, and in the 21st century, short video apps were welcomed with a whole array of mixed feelings.
Some of us still remember Vine and Snapchat, and we are all definitely familiar with the giant that surpassed them all — TikTok.
But does TikTok in any way impact writing as a whole?
And if yes, is it a destructive type of influence or does the super popular app in fact contribute to written communication and the creative process?
Read on to find out answers to these questions in our article:
a) Is text important on TikTok?
- So, TikTok is actually text-based?
- From dancing videos to a knowledge hub
b) Keeping it short in the attention economy
- The format dictates the rules
c) The demanding constraints of TikTok creativity
- The importance of pre-writing
- Keeping it up-to-date
d) Where is Writitude in all of this and do we need to make good writing easier?
- Helping with the tone-of-voice
- Helping with the teamwork
- Don’t fear the blank page!
Is text important on TikTok?
First of all, we’d like to point out that TikTok is not simply a visual medium. It is, in fact, text-based, and very much so. Language is the basis of modern human communication, and TikToks are made to reach out to as many people as possible.
Think of the famous TikTok dances, often referred to as an example of horrific cultural degradation — in most cases, showing young people dancing to songs.
TikTokers try to convey the meaning of the song lyrics, oftentimes with very clever choreographed sequences of movements, acting, visuals and cultural references.
These young persons may not be familiar with the notions of hermeneutics or semantics, and their choice of lyrics may seem primitive to some of us — yet the way songs are treated on TikTok clearly shows that people are still creating and searching for new meanings through text, perhaps now more than ever.
But this is just the tip of the textual iceberg. TikTok is also used for comedy, personal insights, political and social discussions, and education.
In fact, typing “Foucault” or “quantum physics” in the search bar will open up a whole new side of TikTok for the viewer.
Keeping it short in the attention economy
TikToks are created for laughs, self-expression, discussion, cultural awareness, education and business promotion. Some videos serve multiple purposes simultaneously.
What unites them are the constraints of format — even though the maximum length has recently been increased to as much as 10 minutes, it is still the custom on TikTok to “keep it short” for the sake of our fast-paced times.
We live in the era of the attention economy where focus is a scarce commodity. (So, thank you very much, reader, if you have gotten to this part of our article!) This is why TikTok creators take great care to make their textual statements as clear and concise as possible.
Here is a TikTok dedicated to our favourite topic — writing. We’re not just introduced to a bit of trivia. This is a coherent and finalized text, with an introduction, body and conclusion — told in the space of just 43 seconds!
The demanding constraints of TikTok creativity
Clearly, this “economical” format is extremely demanding.
While creators on many other video platforms can afford a whole minute just to explain why they had to choose a particular topic for their “rant”, a TikToker needs to find a way to convey their message in a time of less than two minutes.
This means that a vast majority of TikTok creators take great care to pre-write their videos before presenting the viewers with the final version.
And not only that — decisions need to be made in terms of visualizing the text.
Does it all appear on the screen? If not, what are the key phrases? What fonts should be used?
The clarity of the message, the wording, the style and tone — everything has to be just right to grab the viewers’ attention and stay in their memory. At least for a short while.
Let us not forget that a TikTok writer should also be mindful of the momentary trends.
TikTok is a platform ruled by a mysterious algorithm where only one thing is clear — you must stay active to be noticed.
This means that the responses to other creators’ work must be posted quickly.
Hardly anyone will be interested in watching you comment on an issue that has already gone down in history.
And history moves fast on Tiktok.
Where is Writitude in all of this?
We hope that we’ve managed to show you that text is far from dead, and that the global fascination with TikTok may contribute to our writing culture.
We see how the new generation of content creators has benefited from today’s media platforms, allowing users to focus on self-expression while skipping the technical part.
It turns out that easy-to-use tools and templates do not by any means kill creativity or enable laziness — instead, they make visual media more accessible and encourage users to progress.
To discover their hidden talents and polish their skills. To stay curious and keep striving for more.
This is why we at Writitude, are certain that every (copy)writer will benefit from gaining access to a time-saving toolkit that will allow them to focus on their work by skipping tedious practicalities.
Just like today’s media platforms, our writing platform is meant to ensure a hassle-free creative process consistent with our fast-paced era.
The most important features of Writitude focus on ensuring authenticity and consistency in communication — arguably, these are the most important things for your personal or corporate brand on social media.
Having a distinct tone of voice so that your audience can identify you and build a strong relationship with you has always been crucial for a writer.
Now, in the attention economy era, it is probably more important than ever and we have developed instruments to help you.
The platform automates the appliance of key style and tone rules, helping you tune your texts in the same key so that your project, regardless of the number of creators involved, does not come out as a cacophony of voices.
Writitude also frees you of all practicalities that typically hinder the writing process.
It speeds up collaboration by providing tools for teamwork.
You can keep and share your documents with other team members all in one place, without the usual fuss of going back and forth in the tangled web of emails, chats and storage services.
Additionally, Writitude is great for creating a support system for each of your projects.
You can arrange your customer’s quote libraries, product definitions and guidelines along with your personal notes for your convenience.
You are able to create your own knowledge hub where you never have to start with a blank page or waste your time looking for scraps of information in a stack of opened tabs.
Last but not least — all these features were created by us, writers, to make writing fun for you.
Forget that heavy burden of the blank page and the anxiety that comes with the fear of failure.
Writing doesn’t need to be like this! The happier you are when you create your texts, the happier your audience will be reading them.
