Building Awareness: Instagram and TikTok

by Tickle Mhlambiso

September 9, 2023

Where do Gen-Zers spend most of their time? Social media, of course. CivicScience reports that 90% of Gen Zers use some form of social media, with around 43% using Instagram and TikTok daily. Building awareness through these two platforms, therefore, is critical in the establishment, dissemination, and growth of klllk.

Initially, our strategy for Instagram was to make it feel simple, down-to-earth, and friendly. We wanted to mimic the app this way, as seamless, straight-to-the-point, taking the fuss out of planning/ attending events together. As the app for making like-minded friends, we wanted to draw in an audience of those passionate about making new friends who celebrate the joy of friendship. Engagement is critical; we dedicated time to crafting feed posts that encouraged conversation and posted interactive stories that offered viewers a way to make their opinions count. Since Instagram has become the modern-day equivalent of a website, it made the most sense to focus attention here. Instagram is a tool that users use to evaluate and legitimize us.

Our other hook, TikTok, became more prominent as time progressed. It was July, soon to be August, at the height of summer. College and incoming first-year students start to feel antsy at this time, desperately wanting to return to campus. And what better app to help them cure boredom and look forward to reconnecting than klllk?

Growing on TikTok is a demanding job requiring a consistent stream of videos to be posted daily for measurable, meaningful development, so expanding our TikTok creator team to accommodate our growing need for regular content made sense. We onboarded two new creators – Polina Kharenko and Dakota Jackson – students and experienced content creators attending Boston University to join our team.

Part of being a klllk content creator is having a direct say in what we post on klllk’s social media. These meetings have proved to be very fruitful, for one suggestion was to pivot our content from focusing solely on the theme of friendship and event creation to showcasing the app’s usage.

Because fostering real-life experiences is what the app’s all about – real people having fun doing things together. Relying on user-submitted content is our ultimate goal: we want our users to see themselves on our page – literally and figuratively. We aim to do so as carefully and organically as possible with the help of our entire team. As suggested, we began posting content more specific to our brand – app demos, behind-the-scenes visuals, and video compilations from events hosted on klllk.

Fast-forward to today: we have just completed our back-to-school campaign, where we targeted incoming first-year students. Both accounts are changing to accommodate an even more user-friendly approach by encouraging creators to upload videos directly onto our pages. Since klllk is for everyone, expanding our social media presence would make sense to accommodate the people using it – we’re not a monolith, so why should our voice be?