TikTok UK Hip-Hop Content Opportunity Analysis™ 2019-2022

Content Opportunity Methodology

1. Measure & Categorize. Sample a large number of social posts to find ones that are significantly outperforming the average.
2. Identify Top Themes. Identify the themes that are resonating most with the audience by sorting the themes by their aggregated performance metrics.
3. Identify a Benchmark. Identify content themes that are performing above and under an average benchmark for the industry based on views & engagements.
4. Identify Opportunities. Look at the data and find the content themes that are resonating with the audience based on a set of top creators.
5. Repeat For Each Platform. Repeat the analysis for every platform that matters to your brand and audience to find platform-specific opportunities.

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TikTok Content Bucket Definitions

• Football Freestyle: Rapper @K(E)NZ has built a following and consistent stream of viewers based on his ability to freestyle about various topics in the football community experimenting with comparing athletes, teams and freestyling about his feelings relating to football news.
• Interviews: Interviews are video formats featuring artists who participate in conversations for their fan base to get to know them on a deeper level.
• Cyphers: Cyphers are video formats featuring freestyles and performances with rappers in a collaboration of two people or more.
• Open Verse Challenge: The Open Verse Challenge format features TikTok videos that have been duetted or stitched to encourage collaboration amongst artists on the platform.
• Storytelling: Freestyles that aim to tell a specific story in the length of the video and generally have multiple parts.
• Behind the Scenes: Behind the scenes content focused on sharing unseen moments from music videos or freestyle performance sessions to help viewers understand the creation process for an artist, this content is usually reposted by bigger media outlets to share ‘exclusive’ content.
• Finish Your Own Lyrics Challenge: Rappers are given the beginning part of one of their bars and have to see if they can successfully complete their own lyrics.
• Prompt & Respond: Artists are given questions or statements made by others about them and asked to react and respond.
• Freestyle Rap: Reposts of serialized single format performances and short iPhone clips of artists freestyling.
• Single Format Performance: A video format featuring freestyles and performances by an artist live or in studio from a variety of series such as Fire in the Booth and Spitfire.
• Hip-Hop Fan Discussions: Hip-hop fans leading discussions about the evolution of UK rap and discussing their feelings about new sounds.
• Content Dissection: Artists breaking down certain lyrics or moments while creating content and explaining the significance of the process of their song and music.
• Up & Coming Cypher: A video format that elevates up and coming talent in the form of a cypher, a freestyle or performance by two or more artists at one time.

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Content buckets that had the highest average views & engagement in the UK hip-hop space include:

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Good performing content opportunities for the UK hip-hop audience on TikTok include:

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Substandard performing content opportunities for the UK hip-hop audience on TikTok include:

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Low performing content opportunities for the UK hip-hop audience on TikTok include:

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Content Opportunities:

1. Football Freestyle

Rapper @K(E)NZ has built a following and consistent stream of viewers based on his ability to freestyle about various topics in the football community.

Tactics to Implement:

• VS: One format this rapper uses to discuss football is comparing a set of different footballers against each other to express his opinion of who is the better player.
• Topic: At times his audience will comment on his posts about news in the football community which he will use as a prompt for a freestyle.
• Word Prompt: Other times he generates specific words based on teams and tries to freestyle including all those words in a flow.

Content Opportunities:

• This rapper’s content is successful because he is able to tap into a local interest and big fandom of football and combine it with his talent.
• Think of local interests that talented artists in the community could build truly unique and engaging content around through the lens of music.

6.2M Views

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2.6M Views

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2. Interviews

Interviews are video formats featuring artists who participate in conversations for their fan base to get to know them on a deeper level.

Tactics to Implement:

• Content: Similar to on Facebook and Instagram, Amelia Dimoldenberg’s Chicken Shop Dates brings in the majority (38%) of total average views for the category. Interestingly, KISS FM who generated (27%) of total average views for interviews has seen the highest performing videos about Amelia Dimoldenberg and her relationship to the rapper Aitch (88% of their interview video views).
• Video Length: Interviews on TikTok generally feature very small segments of larger interviews have been broken down into several different clips. There are no introductions and the video starts after a specific question is asked.

Content Opportunities: Across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, Chicken Shop Dates holds the reins of the top performing interview content due to its short, and awkward nature which creates a unique sense of comedy between the interviewer and rappers.

5.1M Views

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3.7M Views

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3. Cyphers

Cyphers are video formats featuring freestyles and performances with rappers in a collaboration of two people or more.

Tactics to Implement:

• Reposts: The TikTok rap community has led way to a large amount of repost accounts that don’t create their own content but leverage existing clips from original content formats that they edit for distribution.
• Text & Edits: Repost accounts take clips from cyphers and use small visual edits to add text that acts as a call to action such as “Why does the Accent make this sound hard”, viewers will click through to see if the statement is true.

Content Opportunities: Since cypher content is being circulated more through repost accounts than original accounts, it signals that there is a lack of original content creators making cypher content accessible on the platform. Viewers are looking for small clips from larger cyphers with lyrics on screen and the main point of why it’s an amazing cypher moment.

603K Views

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525K Views

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4. Open Verse Challenge

The Open Verse Challenge format features TikTok videos that have been duetted or stitched to encourage collaboration amongst artists on the platform.

Tactics to Implement:

• Original Songs: Artists are using Open Verse Challenges to play a part of their own songs then leave an instrumental space for other rappers to add their own verses.
• Duets: Because of the nature of the duet feature on TikTok, these videos are currently not optimized for the platform and leave a black border on the top and bottom of the clips. Responding artists use this space to fill in the lyrics of their verses.

Content Opportunities: Open Verse Challenges are a great way to connect all the genres under the hip-hop umbrella from rap to r&b. This could be used as a way to get artists working together who previously haven’t been able to in the past.

1.7M Views

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489K Views