Writer’s Week 2020: Storytelling on TikTok
Communications program of Binus University International held Writer’s Week 2020 on 14 and 17 December 2020. Writer’s week is an annual event of Communication Program Binus University International. Writers within the media and communication industries share their knowledge, experiences and new ideas on writing with students to enhance their understanding. This is also an opportunity for the students to meet professionals in the industries and build their networking.
This year, the theme is Digital Storytelling. Storytelling is not only about telling stories, it’s about engaging an audience and make stories clearer. Storytelling is also an art, and like art, it requires creativity, vision, skill, and practice. Stories also need to be shared. Looking at the popularity of digital and audio story medium like video, TikTok, and Podcast, we invited the experts on the field.
The topic for the first session is Storytelling on TikTok. The use of social media in today’s society has become essential in our daily lives. Social media can be a platform for people to make their own content, get to know other people, and some people even make money from social media. Therefore, many people use social media in their everyday lives. Nowadays, people start to use new social media called TikTok. This social media is a social networking video sharing service operated by ByteDance that watched over 30 billion videos in one month.
TikTok is a social media site that uses a range of short-form videos that last from 3 seconds to 1 minute, from genres such as dance, comedy, and education. Chloe Bebbington also said “ TikTok is raw and authentic. Users are not interested in polished content and prefer to stay true to themselves. Both diversity and inclusion are celebrated.”
This world’s leading short-form mobile videos enables everyone to be a creator and encourages all of the users to share their creative expression and passion using TikTok. We are lucky to learnt more about the platform directly from the Head of Communication of TikTok Indonesia, Chatrine Siswoyo. She talked about how TikTok can be a platform for people to share stories about their passion. Furthermore, studies by Kantar AdReaction found that younger people are optimistic about ads that last 10 seconds or less. Thus, TikTok is the best platform for everyone to advertise products and also to make content about their passion.
TikTok also provides for your page or also known as FYP that provides content that are related to the users. If the user like beauty or make up, then the content in the FYP also related to beauty. Therefore, the user do not have to worry about the content that they don’t like. Chatrine also encourage all of people to explore TikTok and make our own content that is inspiring, creative and bring joy which is the TikTok’s mission. Starting from each people’s passion and sharing it to everyone. So, let’s start making our own content on TikTok!
Contributor: Nazira Muqtadhi, Communications B2021
Editor: Dian Ayuria Sarwono, M.A.