MIT on TikTok

September 6, 2022

Why we decided to get on TikTok

One of MIT’s primary goals for social media is to feature our community and share our rich culture. We want prospective students who are deciding between MIT and peer universities to know that you absolutely can pursue other interests here outside of math, science, and engineering. And you can have a well-rounded college experience at MIT.

TikTok currently has more than a billion active users worldwide, and 62 percent of them are between the ages of 10 and 29. TikTok will help us reach a younger audience around the world who might not be familiar with MIT or have pre-conceived notions about what it’s like here. As we continue to try to attract the world’s best talent — students, faculty, and staff — TikTok will give us another platform to reach them.

Cassandra Ye (left)  and Grace Sun are sophomores who are creating TikToks for MIT’s channel.
Caption: Cassandra Ye (left)  and Grace Sun are juniors who are creating TikToks for MIT’s channel.

How we got started

There was no question our students would make the best TikToks for us, so we set out to find some who would be a good fit for our channel. We recruited Cassandra Ye ‘24 and Grace Sun ’24 when they were sophomores so they could potentially work with us for two years as a paid assignment. Both Cassandra and Grace have active YouTube channels, so we knew they were great with video and comfortable on camera. We also loved how creative and funny their videos were. We’re hoping they will help us recruit more TikTok creators in the future.

How we do it

We manage TikTok ideas from start to post in Trello. Cassandra and Grace create a draft, screen record the draft on one of their phones, and then upload it to Dropbox for review. We’re aiming for one TikTok a week, but we’ll adjust if necessary. That’s a big reason we started with two creators — we thought they could alternate weeks if one TikTok a week was difficult to manage, though right now they prefer to create them together.

screenshot

Launch!

We posted our first TikTok on Monday, September 5: a sped-up walking tour of campus. Check back soon for our next post!

TikTok Goals

Right now our main goal for this channel is growth. Our current target is to hit 5,000 followers and average 500 likes per TikTok by May of 2023. That’s more than 500 new followers a month. If it ends up being too ambitious we’ll readjust our targets. For now, we would appreciate a follow @MIT and hit that !