Why traditional publishers are getting on TikTok

PA’s Social Media Editor Edd Dracott takes a close look at the world of TikTok.

With Ofcom research showing TikTok as the single most used source of news for teenagers, it presents itself as an exciting platform that news organisations must leverage.

This is just one of the reasons more traditional news publishers are creating their own TikTok content. Edd explores why publishers are doing this, examining TikTok’s audience and how content can be monetised.

From farriers cleaning hooves to commuters dancing with the wind of the London Tube in their hair, the rise of TikTok has created an unprecedented new generation of unlikely celebrities and given the ordinary an extraordinary audience.

With memes about the Roman Empire and store-bought pesto, you would be forgiven for feeling hard news has no place on this platform. But the lines between traditional media and social media become less blurred week to week.

The UK’s most traditional outlets must now take these apps seriously, with PA Media – the UK’s national news agency once officially known as the Press Association – marking its 155th year in 2023 by setting up a TikTok account of its own.

By most measures we’re late to the party, following in the footsteps of the BBC, CNN and Associated Press among a host of news publisher colleagues making accounts in recent years – so why are we all doing it?

Audience

The most obvious benefit speaks for itself, with the Daily Mail boasting an eyewatering 10 million followers and garnering five billion views across all of its TikTok accounts over the past 12 months, according to a January report by the publisher.

Contrasted with the newspaper’s daily print readership, reported at around 720,000 in 2023 Press Gazette figures after years of sector-wide decline, and it’s easy to see which content avenue is worth spending time and money on.

Yet it’s still the new publishers in town who truly dominate the format, with LadBible swaggering around with over 13 million followers on their main page alone.

The eyes and ears accessible by one TikTok post would cause many TV news channels to blush.

According to Ofcom research, TikTok is the single most used source of news for teenagers in the UK, so it won’t be long until it’s too late to jump on the bandwagon.

Younger generations aren’t often switching on Radio 4’s Today programme every morning – this is something media companies, including my own, simply cannot ignore.

Monetisation

In simple terms, advertisers want eyes on their products and more eyes means more marketing money is up for grabs.

It seems everyone is a handshake or two away from someone trying to carve a niche on TikTok, or even claiming to earn a living through the platform.

Reports of earnings amounts vary – but a Financial Times report last year forecast mostly ad-driven revenues of $14.15bn for the platform in 2023, up 43% from $9.89bn the previous year.

Whether or not a channel about the model railway in your basement will make you a millionaire, this is provably a serious market and the only way to get a slice of the pie is to create quality phone-shaped video content.

Expression

TikTok is not a formal platform – in fact, as has been drilled into us since we started our own channel in July 2023, content which is more casual, playful and off the cuff can be the key to success.

This allows journalists to express themselves like never before and, while it’s an art form we’re certainly still mastering, it’s one PA’s reporters, photographers and video journalists have inarguably been able to enjoy.

Our newswire acts as a ghost writer for so much of the UK’s news coverage, often without the public’s knowledge, but now our journalists can put a face to once faceless coverage.

We’ve shared intimate moments with celebrities, political correspondents bringing viewers into the room with the Prime Minister and photographers sharing their personal feelings after the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree they had pictured so many times.

The platform offers a breakaway from tradition and a new opportunity for experimentation in a diverse but sometimes rigid field of work.

Pride

This is a new way for journalists to feel proud of their work and if we don’t adapt so we can share the words, pictures and video we take pride in on TikTok – someone else will.

Dylan Page, known on TikTok as “News Daddy” – is self-styled as the app’s number one news account with over 10 million followers and his down-the-camera, informal bulletins garnering millions of views.

Page’s expert balance of personality, comedy and research tailors global headlines to a younger generation. This is perhaps best summed up by a 2023 video with more than 44 million views, in which he revealed direct messages from YouTuber KSI telling him: “I use you as my news source.”

This new-age reporter is out-performing almost all traditional news publishers on the platform and invariably he’s doing it by using, or at least referencing, traditional news publishers’ own reporting.

Whether you’re a news agency founded in the 1800s or Buzzfeed born in 2006, the quality content you produce can be repackaged for TikTok in moments – via a human or AI.

If we don’t progress by using the platform others will do it for us and rather than fighting it we should try to beat them to the punch.

With the chance to be creative, break new ground as a business and reach millions of new eyes along the way, we’re relishing the opportunity.

Edd’s article is featured in PA Media’s new Lifestyle ezine: Unwrapped: Lifestyle Content Decoded. Access the first issue here.

Edd is Real Life and Social Media Editor for PA Media. Learn more about PA’s Real Life coverage here.