Seeker is the #1 science brand on mobile in the U.S. [Nielsen DCR, December 2019]. Seeker explains every aspect of our world through a lens of science, inspiring a new generation of curious minds who want to know how today’s discoveries in science, math, engineering and technology are impacting our lives and shaping our future. With Seeker’s TikTok, we set out to establish that science can be visually fascinating, bite-size and highly shareable.
With each intriguing and illustrative video on Seeker’s TikTok, we inspire sparks of curiosity. Our belief is that the more you learn about the world around you, the more you will feel a deeper understanding, appreciation, and obligation to protect it. We set out to convey that science concepts, whether game-changing technology grassroots conservation efforts or showing how the human body works, don’t have to be complicated or dry.
We approach every video with a desire to both entertain and educate, and it’s working. We’ve now reached more than 57M lifetime views and more than 4M engagements on the platform to date.
We leveraged distinct insights about our audience to shape our presence on the platform.
According to Forbes, climate change is the #1 priority among GenZ. This insight helped drive our heavy conservation and environmentalism coverage, from our videos showing the arctic sea ice melting to a crab being freed from a ghost net by divers. Similarly, the lack of health science content on the platform was a clear opportunity for Seeker, which prompted ongoing health technology coverage -- seen in our animated explainer showing how a vaccine could prevent HIV and how a robotic thread can slip through brain blood vessels.
By utilizing this strategy and taking advantage of the trending hashtags and music that the TikTok audience enjoys, we were able to put a scientific spin on what people love about TikTok and optimize each video to be not only entertaining and educational, but sought after by the next generation of science enthusiasts.
Whether it’s an octopus that nails the #chooseyourcostume trend, or making #saveouroceans videos that encourage viewers to reduce single-use plastic, we’ve made our TikTok an experience unlike any other and strive to do what no one else is doing on the platform.
And it’s working: Our audiences are highly engaged with our content and we see their passion for science when we answer the insightful questions they have about cephalopod ink, 3D-printed boats, and even the coronavirus.
Seeker became the #1 science brand on TikTok within just three months after launching our first video in June of 2019. In only seven months on TikTok, we’ve grown to 57M+ lifetime views and 4M+ engagements on the platform. Seeker had six videos hit at least 1M video plays in the first two months on the platform, and we grew TikTok followers by 605% in the six weeks after our first viral hit. This traction has continued into 2020 with multiple videos breaking 1M views, but engagement has been our most encouraging metric, with over 41k engagements per post and 4M total since our initial 5 months on the platform. In addition to 6.4M total likes, our viewers are asking inventive questions about the particular science behind the videos and they’re sharing them with their friends. (internal platform analytics, 2019)
And even beyond the comments and shares, we are impressed and encouraged by the duets done by our fans. Viewers often take our videos and make replies with their enthused reactions or showing us how they’re experiencing science in their own lives, proving that they aren’t just watching the content, they’re called to action. This is exactly what we set out to achieve on the platform, and we’ve now become a major player in the science and tech community of TikTok-ers.
