TheSoul Publishing is a digital media studio specializing in creating fun and highly shareable video content across the world. This year it continued to build momentum on TikTok, due to the rapid growth of the platform and the audience’s appetite for consumption of short-form vertical videos. The goal was to both expand our audience on our existing brands on the platform, as well as build new “made for TikTok” IPs from the ground up.
TheSoul Publishing saw massive success with the 5-Minute Craft’s TikTok account, reaching more than ten million followers, creating an opportunity to partner with TikTok on its IAP (instructive accelerator program) to create sub-brands with “made for TikTok” programming. After the program ended, TheSoul Publishing scaled the results of those new launches to create new interpretations of the 5-Minute Crafts brand specifically for TikTok: Archie5, and 5-Minute Crafts House.
Having launched several TikTok accounts before, TheSoul Publishing established a rough baseline for the first months of new accounts – at least 100,000 followers and more than ten million views. While the numbers are important, everything TheSoul Publishing does begins as an experiment. Another key goal was to try new content and techniques to stay at the forefront of what viewers are looking for, while also ensuring our teams have fun and learn along the way.
TheSoul Publishing’s ethos is to produce universal content that everyone can enjoy. The studio’s brands reputation for groundbreaking and entertaining channels have led viewers to seek out their content across multiple platforms. TikTok took notice, and selected TheSoul Publishing to be a part of it’s Instructive Accelerator Program (IAP), an initiative designed to generate instructive and informative videos from a selected group of 25 publishers. For the program, TheSoul Publishing created three new pages: 5-Minute Green, which covered plant care, natural remedies, and green living, La La School to learn trendy tips and tricks, and 5-Minute Science, which included content with experiments that can be accomplished at home with simple household items.
With these launches, we increased our ability and speed at which we test and learn formats and content trends. This, in turn, helped to inform the studio’s long term strategy for growing on TikTok, on our existing brands and new IPs. The additional layer of insights we get from TikTok analytics help to ensure we deliver content that users truly enjoy and engage with everyday.
As for challenges, launching a successful page that resonates with the highly-engaged TikTok audience requires extensive trial and error. TheSoul Publishing found success on the platform by leaning into trends that have been successful enough to cater to niche sub-groups, also called “Tok.” For example, the launch of 5-Minute Green succeeded because it tapped into the “Plant Tok” TikTok community of users who enjoy engaging with and posting about gardening-related content. Still, finding the right audience on TikTok can be challenging, even if you target those micro-communities. For TheSoul Publishing, it means leaving quite a bit of content “on the cutting room floor” as we test and learn. The creative team has found that they need to crack a few eggs to make an omelet and this has helped the studio’s TikTok offering to grow exponentially over the past year.
It’s the entrepreneurial spirit that makes TikTok what it is today, and TheSoul Publishing’s tactics on the platform use that mindset to guide the processes.
In 2021, TheSoul Publishing reached more than 67 million followers across 70+ TikTok pages.
TikTok featured TheSoul Publishing's 5-Minute Crafts in its first-ever 'Year on TikTok' list which spotlights "the top brands and campaigns that inspired creativity and brought joy to the TikTok community." 5-Minute Crafts is highlighted among 'Brands that Built a Community' for showcasing "helpful ideas for craft projects that empower viewers to solve everyday problems with simple, creative solutions."
Thanks to TheSoul Publishing’s entrepreneurial test and learn approach across the board, TikTok has quickly emerged as a significant growth area within its stable of distribution platforms. In 2021 we saw a 5x increase in followers across all of our TikTok channels compared to the previous year. Those results were used to initiate many more TikTok launches which will continue to fuel growth into 2022.
