We’re bringing you into the realm of TikTok in 2024. At Antler Social, we’ve been deeply immersed in TikTok since the days of Musical.ly, growing and adapting with every transformative wave.
We will be your navigators, exploring forecasted trajectories that will define TikTok's course in the coming year. We’re looking at TikTok trends for 2024 and what the future of TikTok looks like.
But to navigate this, we need to look at where TikTok has developed in 2023.
TikTok in 2023
2023 brought us the Roman Empire, Tube Girl and turned our lives into a Wes Anderson movie. TikTok reported that 2023 was a particularly strong year for entertainment, lifestyle, education and sports content.
But what stood out the most?
- People freaked out watching themselves age with the aging filter where we saw over 24.6M creations
- People really got into their healthy sweet treat phase, with people viewing ‘Date Bark’ 24.5B times
- We shared our beige, red and green flags over 8.5B times
- We were in our ‘delulu’ era (thanks Taylor Swift). ‘Delulu’ had a whopping 4.4B views
- People got inspired and judgy at girl dinner/boy dinners, viewed 2.6B times
- We still don’t know the answer despite the ‘Roman Empire’ being viewed 2.4B times. How often do men think about the Roman Empire though really?
- And we threw a whole lot of shade with ‘Bombastic Side Eye’ being viewed 2.3B times
Above everything else, 2023 on TikTok was all about unique communities and storytelling. In 2024, we can expect this to continue.
Original Content is Going To Be More Popular Than Trends
Trends are so powerful, but with the trend space becoming oversaturated, people are more keen to see original content from users and brands. It’ll push the creative boundaries for brands, force people to think more in-depth about their TikTok strategy and potentially go hand in hand with the longer formats.
A Push On Long Form Content
Longer form content is becoming increasingly prevalent, and we’re seeing more content that is over 30 seconds. Whilst short form is still the nature of the platform, users will be far happier to consume longer formats if the hooks are strong enough.
Static Content Is Going To Be Essential
Photos are being pushed RIGHT NOW, so there is going to be far more scope for static content on the platform to tell the story.
Recently, we’re seeing TikTok promoting a “join” feature to invite users to share photo content related to the original post, ranging from food to fashion, and we can only expect this to develop over the coming months.
Live Streams Will Be Key In Community Building
Live streams were a huge hit in 2022, and they came around in waves. In 2024 we can expect to see another wave of live streams ‘just for fun’, where creators are going to build and grow their community. Live streams amongst creators and brands will be an opportunity to further connect with their audience in real-time.
Older Audiences Will Become More Prominent
Mature brands will continue to enter the space as we see an increase in older audiences. 59% of users are between 18-34 and 32% of the audience are now between 35-54, which means the platform is aging up.
Naturally, this means brands for more mature audiences have a new opening to tackle the TikTok space whilst it’s completely unsaturated. This could mean a totally different wave of content creation that’s more accessible to an older market.
More Ways To Monetise
Monetisation is the word on all marketeers’ lips.
Now that longer-form content is more welcomed on the platform, it poses the question of whether monetisation is on the horizon. We can expect to see more opportunities for ads with the potential for ad breaks or ad pop-ups on content that is mutually beneficial to the brand marketing and the creator whose content the ad appears in.
Branded CapCuts Are Going To Offer Creative Freedom For Brands
Taking into consideration the new “CapCut for Business”, it suggests that there could soon be an ability for brands to create their own CapCut templates. This is a far more accessible way for users to jump on branded “trends” without feeling forced or inauthentic.