TikTok is coming after Google’s businesses, and it wants its users to help.
The company’s new creator rewards program, announced Monday, incentivizes creators to post longer videos and optimize their content for search. By asking creators to prioritize those two factors, TikTok may be able to ratchet up its early efforts to compete with Google’s search engine and video platform YouTube.
To qualify for payments in the new program, a creator’s video must be over one minute long, a requirement that TikTok has been testing in a beta program for months. The company also said that it will assign a “search value” to qualified videos based on how aligned they are with popular search topics. That search value, along with other factors like originality, video watch time, and how often users like, share, or comment on a post, will help determine a creator’s payout.
To qualify for the program, creators must be at least 18 years old and have at least 10,000 followers and 100,000 views in the previous 30 days.
Some savvy TikTok creators have been experimenting with search-engine optimization for months, well before the company made it criteria for payouts. Several told Business Insider they would analyze hashtag trends, use captions, and tweak their handles and bios to make their accounts more discoverable.
“Even if the video doesn’t do well in the beginning, I know it eventually will because the content is SEO driven and could get picked up months down the line,” TikTok creator Abigail Akinyemi told BI in December 2022.
TikTok has introduced a creator search insights tool in some regions, making it easier for users to tailor their videos to search trends.
However, not all creators have been thrilled by TikTok’s efforts to promote search content. Some told BI that the app’s recommended search phrases pushed false or sensational topics associated with themselves or their videos.
The platform’s focus on longer, search-friendly videos may ultimately benefit creators who make educational and informational content on the app. There’s more time to break down a concept through a three-minute video than the original 15 seconds that made TikTok take off.
“Now, people are a lot more interested in why we’re making something and learning from it than just watching us do it,” food creator Zachary Neman, who participated in the earlier beta program that paid creators for longer videos, told BI in August.
Along with the announcement about its rewards program criteria, TikTok also said it planned to revamp the analytics it offers to creators around payouts. Creators will soon be able to see how each individual video performs in terms of revenue-per-one-thousand views, for example.
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