One ongoing question mark in the world of local media and advertising is TikTok. It has been a new and disruptive force with orbiting questions for the past several years. But now we’re faced with a new set of questions given its geopolitical headwinds and uncertain fate as a U.S. operation.

So in honor (excuse the pun) of tomorrow’s Supreme Court activity when it will hear arguments, we’re publishing a recent interview we conducted with SOCi Director of Market Insights, Damian Rollison. As one of our go-to sources, he weighs in on potential outcomes – in and beyond the case itself.

Why should you listen? As a thought leader and veteran at the intersection of local media, marketing, and search, he has ample perspective. Throw in the social angle in terms of SOCi’s chops in that area and there’s a lot to take away. See the full interview below and stay tuned for others to come…

Localogy Insider: The looming TikTok ban is a bit of a moving target, given an incoming administration and potential white knights like Kevin O’Leary. Processing all of the events to date and your intuition, what’s your current state of thinking on the fate of TikTok’s U.S. operations?

Damian Rollison: At the moment, TikTok’s fate appears to be highly dependent on what the Supreme Court will decide, which is difficult to predict given the complex issues at stake and the shifting sands of political opinion on this topic. But it’s notable — as TikTok’s legal team argued in the D.C. District case and will surely emphasize in its Supreme Court arguments — that the government has so far failed to cite any evidence of an active security threat. Meanwhile, in the time since Biden signed the ban into law, TikTok’s popularity has only continued to grow. Trump’s own shifting position can be viewed as a signal of recognition that public sentiment has swung in TikTok’s favor.

Localogy Insider: One question – and lobbying angle for TikTok – is the local business impact if it goes away. Given that Soci includes TikTok on its platform, what’s your thought on this? Is it critical to some SMBs, or simply something that will create a vacuum to be filled by something else if it goes away?

Damian Rollison: Our Consumer Behavior Index found that in 2024, 18 to 24-year-olds were more likely to use TikTok than Google Search when looking up information about a local business. Local search is just one example of a larger trend whereby younger users are choosing TikTok over other sources for a very broad variety of needs. In a world where traditional media seem outmoded and incumbent platforms like Facebook are skewing older, TikTok represents an authentic, peer-curated alternative for many young consumers, and increasingly for other age groups as well. For this reason, SMBs and multi-location brands should pay attention to TikTok as a communication channel. And if it goes away, I do think other platforms will scramble to fill the void.

It’s also worth mentioning that a segment of TikTok users rely on the platform as a significant source of income, including SMBs who sell products via TikTok Shop. These users will see the greatest impact.

Localogy Insider: Similar question but focused on Soci: how would the sudden disappearance of TikTok impact your platform? Would it be a big deal or a medium deal? To the extent that you can quantify TikTok activity on your platform, we welcome any data to quantify what that impact could be, even if in general terms.

Damian Rollison: We’ll actively support our chain and franchise clients on any and all prominent platforms that are used by a broad base of consumers. Our job isn’t to express a preference for any platform, but rather to help bridge the communication gap between businesses and consumers wherever it exists. If TikTok mutates into another form or disappears entirely, we’ll accommodate that change just as we have the myriad other changes in the local ecosystem over the years. In the near term and depending how things play out, some brands may feel the need to quickly rearrange their social content strategies, but many are already active in short-form video on other formats such as Reels on Instagram, and these parallel activities would tend to minimize the impact.

Localogy Insider: Further speculating on the impact of TikTok going away, it seems that its local business adoption is still relatively small and therefore the aggregate impact could be limited. We believe the reason for that is that TikTok is a bit of a double-edged sword for localized businesses. It offers a highly engaged audience and a unique format, but it’s mostly successful when native production is applied. There’s a specific “language” to TikTok and you can’t necessarily port other media. Has this factor impeded its adoption growth among local businesses that have to learn that language? Is there anything Soci offers to lighten that lift?

Damian Rollison: TikTok has definitely helped to define a more informal mode of communication. Some brands have seen a great deal of success in generating this type of content by enabling their local managers and employees to create videos and similar assets for TikTok and other social platforms. For instance, we work with a coffee shop franchise whose local owners and staff upload photo and video content on social platforms related to local events, in-store offers, and engaging content like Employee of the Week or pets visiting the store. Some brands are reluctant to give this amount of power to staff at the store level, but this strategy can offer the kind of human connection users are looking for on platforms like TikTok.

As far as what SOCi does to help, our tools are built to support a multi-tiered social strategy where content can be shared at the local level but monitored and approved at the corporate level. We’ve also incorporated AI to ease the effort of doing these things at scale, while leaving room for the all-important human element.

Localogy Insider: Back to the “vacuum” that TikTok’s disappearance could create, where do you think that marketing activity will be channeled? Who stands to benefit greatest from that outcome?

Damian Rollison: Imagining a world where TikTok simply goes away, I’d guess the biggest immediate beneficiaries will be Instagram and YouTube. These platforms have made the greatest effort to produce parallel offerings and already enjoy overlapping audiences. True, TikTok has an ecosystem of creators and consumers of content that won’t be easily replicated, but users will be eager to find alternatives. A new startup, or more than one, that emerges to try to capture TikTok’s abandoned user base, would also be a possibility, as would a lateral action by a company like Snap to build out more TikTok-like features.

We’ll be back soon with more insights from other key voices in the Localogyverse…

Header image credit: Solen Feyissa on Unsplash