TikTok & Women’s Sport – What Are You Waiting For?
We love getting social with netball here at Sistersnsport so were intrigued to find out more about the latest kid on the social block – TikTok!
It’s fun, fast and doesn’t take itself too seriously!
What’s it about?
It’s all about creating and sharing funny short videos (not images)!
A lot of TikToks are created by teenagers and young adults who record themselves while dancing to a popular song. Videos are portrait and can be up to 60 seconds long, but the most popular one tend to be 15 seconds only. As on Instagram, you can swish up your video with effects, filters and stickers, but on TikTok you can search for sounds/music to accompany your video. TikTok lets you choose from a huge range of sounds, including popular songs, moments from TV programmes and other people’s TikToks.
Also like Instagram, you can use the caption to describe your content, but here it is limited to 100 characters. Hashtags are important, especially helping you to find a particular meme, joke or challenge. You can navigate TikTok by scrolling up and down like a traditional feed, so no need to tap or swipe from side to side. There are two feeds – your own one of people that you have chosen to follow and TikTok’s “For You” feed where TikTok selects content for you based on your engagement and browsing habits.
Why is it good for sport?
We think TikTok has fantastic potential for all sports – particularly during the current lockdown – the chance to create fun trends by encouraging young people to try out new sports skills and challenges, especially set to music. It’s also a chance to show people who might not watch sport on TV or other platforms how much they can enjoy it.
There’s an amazing opportunity for using your creativity to come up with alternative fun ways to get people more active, especially at home or in the garden. It’s a great time to do this as we are all stuck at home in the lockdown! There’s scope for people to try out the original skill, then add their own angle to it too, then share that new skill.
We might not be able to play netball in a team together IRL, but you could always take advantage of the “duet” functionality to perform a skill ‘alongside’ other people or your teammates by duplicating another video? You could also recreate a famous last-minute winning goal or defensive intercept set to a dramatic soundtrack?
TikTok also gives the chance to get to know the personalities behind the sportsmen and women we follow – not taking yourself too seriously and having a good sense of humour are key as well as the ability to laugh at the quirkier aspects of your sport – it’s not about the perfection of Instagram!
Surprisingly, there don’t seem to be that many women’s sports accounts active on TikTok – but here are exceptions who are nailing it with their fantastic sporty skills!
Liv Cooke – Freestyle Footballer – @livcookefs (4.1m followers, 57.2m likes)
We love her awesome football skills and for keeping it real on there (she shares when it goes wrong as well as when it goes right!) Check Liv out as she tests her amazing football touch in all sorts of places here: https://vm.tiktok.com/tcsnB8/
Crissa Jackson – Basketballer & Harlem Globetrotter – @crissa_ace (4.8m followers, 102.7m likes)
How does she keep that ball spinning? Showcasing her amazing ball skills, Crissa encourages her followers to try out all sorts of challenges, from beginner duets and spinning to dribbling to dancing with basketballs. All done with a huge smile!
We took the plunge ourselves last week and joined TikTok with our #SNSAprilChallenge, posting a new skills challenge for you to try out every three days in April. All entries get the chance of winning some great netball gear.
Our Co-Founder Jen is loving creating the challenges – and her first video has over 235k views and over 7k likes (& counting). It has shown us what can be done on this platform to get us more active. Ballers have been having a go at the challenges and sharing their attempts not just in TikTok but all over social media – Twitter, Instagram Stories & Facebook – not to mention other international netballers recording their own versions.
Come over and give us a follow and join in our challenges! Here’s the latest one:
@sistersnsport CHALLENGE 5 Two ball challenge @crazycatchuk ##quickreactions ##snsaprilchallenge ##netball ##skills ##fyp ##foryourpage ##roses ##houseoftiktok ##xyzbca
♬ Roses – Imanbek Remix – SAINt JHN
Our Three Top TikTok Tips:
1. Start with the music and then create your content around that, not the other way round!
2. Check out the current trends & see if you can do something in your own style.
3. Have fun and don’t take it too seriously! We’ve spotted quite a few sportswomen and teams with accounts who are ‘lurking’ on TikTok, but not posted yet. What are you waiting for?
Come and join the TikTok party!