In my organisation, we’ve recently started a project on TikTok. It’s been in the back of my mind ever since our Wachtzeit project, when one of the external experts made the suggestion we might want to think about a TikTok channel.
The suggestion was aimed primarily at communication, to use TikTok to communicate with a younger audience. That made sense, only I didn’t have staff able to take on the job. We had only recently started our Instagram account and were still finding our feet with producing content regularly. To add another social media channel didn’t seem realistic.
Still, I was acutely aware that younger people were the ones we needed to reach out to if we wanted to secure our audience of the future. When a funding call came up for innovative digital projects, I felt the time was right to tackle TikTok.
But not, as had been the original suggestion, to keep up a lively chatter about our work. Even after three years of Instagram, that’s still not something we’re managing regularly. To try to feed TikTok at the same time wasn’t going to work. Nor was it what most interested me.
I was intrigued by TikTok as a learning platform. The idea arose in a conversation with a younger member of staff who told me about them and their friends using TikTok to study. My organisation provides further education across many subject areas. It made sense for us to produce content specifically for TikTok. Since this was our day job, the additional effort was manageable.
We started WissenBisse in November 2023. For now, while we’re experimenting with the platform and the format, we’re focusing on four subject areas: languages, sustainability, art and future skills. Some of the videos we’re doing ourselves, for others we’ve recruited tutors who already work with us.
We’re posting daily except Sundays, and so far we’ve had 3.4K unique viewers. I don’t know how that compares to other start-up channels, but I’m really happy with that number. That’s 3.4K people who have probably never engaged with our organisation before. Also, that’s 3.4K people on TikTok who got quality facts from an established organisation. TikTok is here to stay, and I feel it’s important that organisations like ours do not leave this platform to others with possibly less reputable motivations.
For me, the TikTok project has several aims:
- We’re reaching out to a new audience. If TikTok is where they’re looking for learning content, then that is where we need to be.
- We’re increasing our skills in providing different learning opportunities. To do a short TikTok video that still provides quality learning is a challenge. To engage with learners on TikTok is also different to having them sit in a class room. We’re daily learning to become a stronger education provider for all audiences.
- We’re opening a gateway into further learning with us. Of course a TikTok video or a video series cannot provide the same depth of learning as a longer term course with us. I’m hoping TikTok will open doors for those audiences to come to us for further learning.
The project at the moment is fully funded and pays our tutors. We’re not earning any money, of course, so the project’s impact once funding ends at the end of this year will determine whether or not we will further invest in it. There are ways to monetise content on TikTok but whether that would work for us is something we will need to explore further in the future.
I am hugely proud that our organisation has taken this step. The staff and tutors involved have jumped right in, which speaks to their flexibility and readiness to experiment and innovate. It is what’s needed in the wider learning sector. Things really have changed dramatically over the last three years; people’s habits are different, the way they access content is different, what they are hoping to get from it is different, too. We all need to experiment. Even if we decide not to continue the project in the end, we will have learnt so much. Already, we’re thinking about expanding our YouTube channel and creating an additional learning platform for our content, all because of this project on TikTok. That alone has made it worthwhile.
Nicole Deufel's Blog 