Like the weather in Ohio, TikTok trends change quickly. ;) What’s popular one day may not be popular the next. As quick as the trends come and go, it’s crucial to act fast and create your own take on a popular trend as long as it makes sense for your brand.
Since launching the university’s TikTok account in 2019, Kent State’s social media team has made a concerted effort to monitor trends and incorporate the ones that make sense for our brand. Between popular sounds and songs to challenges and even clips from the “Corn Kid,” there’s no shortage of creativity we’ve been able to use to showcase the Golden Flashes community.
Here are just a few examples of how Kent State has stayed-up-to date on popular tags, challenges and content throughout this year!
Kent State President Todd Diacon made his university TikTok debut, joining in on the rankings trend. In this case he rated buildings on Kent Campus using some interesting facts along the way. The video was viewed more than 21,000 times and received over 2,000 likes, making it one of the highest engaged videos of the semester.
To kick off Homecoming we used two popular sounds, “Bluey” and the conversation trend, on TikTok.
Using the trending audio, “Run Boy Run” by Woolkid, we synced photos to the fast paced beat to show what Kent State would be if it were a color, season, place to eat, animal, mascot, building, time of day, letter, transportation and phrase! This trend was viewed more than 14,000 times on TikTok and 42,000 times on Instagram!
One of our top-performing TikTok videos featured the audio of a young corn enthusiast sharing his pure love for the food. We used this sweet trend to highlight what people love about Kent State!
Another popular trend we couldn’t pass up on was “He’s a 10.” This trend features a special someone who is a 10 but there is always a caveat! In our case, Flash is just simply a ten. ;) Our video featured photos of Flash around campus doing what he does best!
Using the trending “Fortnite'' audio, we featured members of our dance team and Flash to show our excitement for the football home opener!
And our highest-viewed and liked video of all time came from the “what are you listening to” trend. For this video, members of the Kent State social media team asked students what songs they were listening to on their headphones as they made their way around campus. This is our highest-viewed TikTok of all time generating more than 140,000 views and 17.4k likes!
Including popular sounds and challenges to the content strategy has been a tremendous success on both Instagram and TikTok. The trend-based content has not only enabled our social team to be creative in showing off our university, but it has resonated with audiences based on strong engagement and consistent growth. Our team has been diligent in keeping up with trends, analyzing popular content and incorporating the trending content that has been relevant to our brand.
Be sure to follow all of our social channels to see how Kent State stays up-to-date on all the latest trends!