TikTok Class Is in Session

Skyler Chase, 25, grew up watching vlogs and comedy sketches on YouTube. He wasn’t simply entertaining himself. He was studying skilled abilities to run his Los Angeles-based advertising and marketing company and educate social media courses. Final September, he began a course on TikTok, supplementing what had been his solely providing, a category about Instagram. The category has taken off as a result of TikTok and its decrease barrier to entry have lured individuals who had been intimidated by YouTube, he mentioned.

“On YouTube, content material creation is completely completely different,” he mentioned. “It actually comes all the way down to having the standard of your video. It’s good to have a pleasant digicam. On TikTok, you simply want to make use of your telephone.”

Mr. Chase’s two-hour-long class, which, in accordance with the platforms, has greater than 22,000 college students throughout Skillshare and Udemy, borrows from his “YouTube background” however is supposed to be “somewhat extra accessible for the older technology,” he mentioned.

Courses like Mr. Chase’s have attracted companies considering advertising and marketing on TikTok and younger people who find themselves centered on content material creation, mentioned Alicia Hamilton-Morales, senior vp of content material, group and model at Skillshare.

“Though YouTube is so dominant and vastly profitable, TikTok has made the need to know learn how to create and optimize video higher in a much wider market,” she mentioned.

Angalee Schmidt, 25, took Mr. Chase’s class at the start of the pandemic to discover ways to dream up, then create TikTok movies. Her work in tourism had dried up, so she pared again her touring and began residing full time in Rochester, Minn., and sought a profession change to social media advertising and marketing.

“A part of that was determining: How can I earn cash now?” Ms. Schmidt mentioned. Her reply got here on TikTok. “I used to be seeing all of those folks make movies and I used to be like, ‘I could make that myself.’”