TikTok is a social media platform that is growing in popularity. Developed by a Chinese technology conglomerate, TikTok has surged into the popular culture of the United States.
It is both an extremely inviting platform for all walks of life and inherently controversial. Despite this, adult content creators and independent producers have used TikTok effectively to market their content and services to a wider audience of young adults aged 18 to 32.
In this blog post, Adult Site Broker adult site owners and independent performers who aren’t already on the platform now how TikTok marketing can lead to more users and conversions.
What is TikTok?
As we already mentioned, TikTok is a Chinese-developed social media platform. Unlike platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, TikTok focuses on short visual content, such as videos and clips, spanning a variety of genres.
The app stands out for its ability to captivate users and keep them engaged, offering personalized feeds of entertaining short videos paired with music and sound effects.
Both amateur and professional content creators can apply filters, add background music, stickers, and more to their videos, as well as create split-screen duet videos even when they’re in different places. Brands and creators of all types, including adult entertainment brands, use TikTok in a manner that is noteworthy and should be taken seriously, given the app’s popularity.
News organizations, department stores, software companies, government agencies, social media influencers, models, singers, dancers, musicians, comedians, political figures, and more all use TikTok to communicate. TikTok drives cultural and political conversations as much as Twitter does, if not more so, given the nature of video and the expanded platform accessibility.
How Popular is TikTok?
According to an analysis by investment news and information outlet Investopedia, TikTok launched in the United States market a few years ago. Statistics cited in that analysis indicate that there are 1 billion active monthly users worldwide, based on data from September 2021. Some three billion total downloads are expected worldwide, with several million users choosing to spend billions on the company itself and on the brands and firms that use it as an advertising medium.
Social media marketing consultancy Social Shepherd reports that, as of now, TikTok has been downloaded over 3.5 billion times worldwide. This is the fifth app to accomplish this goal, with the rest being in the family of applications developed for platforms owned by Meta and Mark Zuckerberg.
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly expanded its user base, making TikTok a social staple during quarantines in highly developed countries worldwide, including the United States. A spike in users ages 18 to 24 is notable, especially given that this is a social network many in this age group grew up with, from when they were minors to now as legal adults.
How Do Adult Entertainment Professionals Use TikTok?
TikTok can be used by adult entertainment professionals through a very particular practice. There is plenty of suggestive and steamy content littered throughout the application. But the terms of service outlined by TikTok are very similar to those of other social media networks, such as Instagram.
Like Meta-owned Facebook and its photo-sharing site, TikTok does not permit nudity or sexual content in its videos. As we’ve seen, though, there are many adult performers and online sex workers who have successfully skirted these rules by posting teasers and clips of scantily-clad models engaging in the latest lip-syncing trend or acting out an internet meme.
How Some Adult Creators Use TikTok
One creator who has successfully used TikTok to build a following of over 4.5 million, with about 135 million likes on her videos, is the model who goes by Stormigee or Storm for the remainder of this case study.
Storm has gone viral on TikTok with her comedy NSFW clip series “Whora the Explorer.” Based on the animated show “Dora the Explorer” that originally aired on Nickelodeon for years and turned into a live-action film franchise for family audiences, Storm films herself running around in pink tube tops and high heels, getting herself into farcical scenarios, to what she says a “whore” would get into.
You don’t have to appreciate the message, but Storm has generated millions of views from these TikTok clips alone. She has also posted clips on her page poking fun at having an adult film star or entertainer as a neighbor through more comedic scenarios.
While Storm is tackling the NSFW subject matter in these clips, she doesn’t show off any nude part of her body in compliance with the terms of service outlined by TikTok. She does, however, link to her “vanilla” Instagram account, which has a direct link to a directory of her accounts and websites, including her premium OnlyFans account and her other social media profiles where she markets herself.
Since the terms of service for TikTok also prevent directing traffic to 18+ websites, Storm has used the very popular “link-in-bio” services that allow adult creators to share all of their NSFW and SFW content indirectly, but in an accessible manner. TikTok has previously cracked down on link-in-bio services, but they are still widely used despite moderators’ actions.
What Other Adult Creators Say
We’ve come across additional case studies in our research for this blog post, including testimony from adult cam models who use TikTok as a marketing tool. Vicky Plush and Aerie Saunders, both models with followings on TikTok, told YNOT Cam that using the platform can be helpful if content creators are willing to take the risk.
“It’s a good idea to be active, funny, showing probably something outside the sex work that you enjoy so the people can get interested in what you do and start supporting you,” Vicky Plush told YNOT Cam contributor Alison Sparks, also an adult cam model.
By combining more subtle marketing strategies, both Plush and Saunders advised, you can influence how content moderators and TikTok’s algorithms detect the types of content being marketed. FapHouse, a clip store and OnlyFans alternative affiliated with a group of companies that owns and operates xHamster.com, also has a TikTok page for creators who use its platform. Other properties in the adult industry aren’t as open on TikTok, but many personalities use it.
Algospeak
Lifehacker, a technology news outlet, stated that algospeak is a collection of coded words and emojis that aren’t easily understood but can be deciphered with the right context clues, which is useful for stopping the deletion of content by an adult creator. A vernacular of algospeak has developed among the NSFW communities on TikTok to communicate these messages to users, including the use of link-in-bio services and OnlyFans models who call themselves “accountants.”
Adult-Only Livestreams & New Parental Controls
After outrage from parents and socially conservative anti-porn activists, TikTok announced in November that users must be aged 18 years or older to use the app’s live streaming features.
It previously allowed 16-year-olds to live stream. This rule introduced new features that overhaul TikTok’s parental controls and safety protocols to filter out NSFW content from the feeds of users under the app’s established age of maturity (18 years). Included in this effort was the creation of “adult-only” live streams that allow mature audiences to view edgier, spicier content from their favorite creators, including adult models who use TikTok to market their premium accounts, x-rated cam shows, and clip stores. Nudity and sex are still prohibited.
Be Aware of TikTok’s Direct and Indirect Factors
To conclude, it is important to discuss the challenges of using TikTok in greater depth. In no way are we at Adult Site Broker trying to discourage adult creators and brands from using the TikTok app as a potential marketing tool.
Rather, we wish to point out several things to keep in mind if you choose to use TikTok as a marketing tool. We would do the same thing, a cost-benefit analysis, for any other social media platform, including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Snapchat.
TikTok, for starters, is a political football. Especially in the United States, politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties view TikTok as a national security issue.
Since TikTok was developed by the Chinese technology company ByteDance, the often right-leaning national security establishment believes the app can be exploited by intelligence agencies under the Communist Party of China to spy on the millions of U.S. citizens who use the app daily.
Donald Trump, the former Republican president from 2016 to 2020, accused the Chinese government of spying on the U.S. user base through the app and demanded that it be removed from the digital culture of the country unless it agrees to certain conditions.
These conditions include TikTok’s domestic operations being spun off into a company led by U.S. executives, and the data of the local user base being stored on servers controlled by a company like Oracle or another American multinational tech company.
We at Adult Site Broker hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Please reach out to us if you have any questions.
