Peel back the feed for a day, and the pattern is unmistakable. TikTok is powered by simple, front-camera performance. Lip-syncs and selfie-style monologues form the platform’s backbone, while familiar verticals like dance, outfits, gaming, cars, pets, and babies fill meaningful but smaller blocks. Then comes the vast other, an unruly long tail of local jokes, niche skills, micro-reviews, and one-off experiments that never trend globally yet constantly refresh the feed.

This platform environment is less a catalogue of topics than a behavior map. TikTok rewards people who point a phone at their face, speak fast, cut faster, and hit a hook before the thumb moves. That grammar matters more than whether the clip is about skincare or spark plugs. Users show up to make and watch performance in miniature, and the app’s ranking system learns from that rhythm at a continental scale.

Inside TikTok’s Real Behavior

A recent analysis shared by The Economist has offered one of the clearest snapshots yet of how people actually use TikTok, and the results dismantle much of the myth around the platform. Drawing from a working paper that managed to capture every video uploaded during specific time windows, the dataset reveals that TikTok remains anchored in personal performance. Lip-syncs and selfies dominate the platform’s creative supply, overshadowing more traditional content categories such as dance, gaming, or fashion. The long tail, labeled simply as “other”, shows just how fragmented and unpredictable the platform truly is, filled with micro-niches, regional humor, and local trends that never appear on mainstream dashboards but constantly feed the algorithm’s discovery engine.

For marketers, The Economist’s glimpse into TikTok’s posting reality underscores that the platform’s power does not lie in its topics but in its behaviors. The fact that such a large share of uploads are self-directed, low-lift videos proves that TikTok thrives on intimacy, improvisation, and accessibility rather than polish. It is a medium defined by participation, not production.

Supply Beats Celebrity

Because uploads skew toward low-lift, first-person videos, TikTok’s supply is inexhaustible and deeply personal. Every hour brings new versions of the same behaviors, singing to a sound, explaining a trick, reacting to a trend, performed by different people in different places. Big creators matter, but the engine runs on countless small attempts that the algorithm evaluates in seconds and distributes as far as they deserve to go. This explains why unknown accounts can still break through and why trends feel like flash floods rather than scheduled programming.

For marketers, the implication is straightforward. Influence on TikTok is manufactured by the matching layer, not granted solely by follower counts. Brands that treat the feed as a perpetual audition, including many tries, tight edits, and fast reads, will outperform brands that wait on celebrity tentpoles.

The Long Tail is the Discovery Engine

That oversized other bucket is where niche communities, regional humor, and subculture signals live, and it is where many commercial moments begin. A one-minute fix for a common product problem or a concise before-and-after can travel from a hundred views to a hundred thousand if it hooks quickly and survives the next few swipes. The platform’s strength lies in rapidly recommending what is popular, and by doing so, it tests whether something obscure can become popular among a specific group of people right now.

Marketers should therefore plan for breadth before depth. The winning plan seeds multiple lightweight creative angles and lets the system discover unexpected pockets of intent.

Format Fluency Beats Topic

If TikTok usage is defined by user behavior, creative strategy, in turn, is determined by form. Successful videos tend to open with a promise or a reveal within the first two seconds, keep faces close enough to remain readable on a moving phone, and layer captions that can be scanned without pausing. Cuts follow the rhythm of the soundtrack, and sounds or voiceovers serve as narrative scaffolding rather than decoration. On the platform, a simple beauty review can sell hardware if it respects the format, while a flawless product demo can fail if it ignores the ritual that drives attention.

This design principle also guides brand safety. In an environment dominated by personal content, rigid topic blocklists have limited value. Suitability decisions rely on frame-level indicators, such as visual composition, on-screen text, and audio tone, combined with post-publication reviews that refine reach without blunt exclusions.

Because the default TikTok post is quick, spontaneous, and personal, creative assets decay quickly. Audiences tire of an edit within days, forcing a new kind of rhythm. The most effective brands treat the platform as a live laboratory where multiple lightweight variations outperform a single polished production. They measure creative primitives, with hook phrasing, subtitle style, cut tempo, sound choice, and the prominence of faces, and then rework winners before fatigue sets in. The brands that adapt and learn faster than the feed evolves ultimately become the ones the algorithm learns to favor.

From Viewing to Buying

TikTok’s usage patterns also explain its growing role in commerce. The same behaviors that make short clips sticky, such as clear hooks, visual proof, and social validation in comments, make product consideration feel native. With shop features, creator affiliates, and pinned calls to action, a scroll can become a cart without leaving the thread. The most effective ads increasingly resemble the most effective posts because they are essentially the same thing with a price tag attached.

Understanding how people use TikTok means accepting that the platform is a format market first and a topic market second. People come to perform and to watch others perform in bite-sized scenes. The algorithm turns that ceaseless supply into personalized discovery. To win, brands must master the form, produce at high velocity, measure at the edit level, and let the long tail uncover demand they did not plan for.