Skip to content
Like it or not, Tik Tok 
is a player in the social space worthy of our serious attention. With well over 2 Billion downloads at the time of writing it's now the 7th most used social media network, with 90% of users accessing the application on a daily basis. From a marketing perspective, it's important to understand that it's one of the fastest-growing applications in terms of usage and engagement, and the oldies are starting to encroach on the typical under-30 userbase.
Most Tik Tok videos are between 15 and 60 seconds, with 3-minute videos soon to be available. Uploading a video from an Android mobile phone to TikTok will allow you to post a video size of 72 MB, while iPhone users may upload videos up to 287.6 MB. Most videos are created in profile view (rather than landscape).
Tik Tok doesn't provide much by way of an API at this stage but they do provide a simple oEmbed endpoint , and it's this object we retrieve for the purpose of rendering the video.
The Result
Shortcode of [tiktok url="https://www.tiktok.com/@therock/video/6813396719523450117"] returns the following:
@therock Thank you for 20M. #happyathome #quarantinelife
♬ original sound - 🍋 John Lemon 🍋
The video above tends to define the quality content you'll find on the service. A better illustration of the cutting-edge creative made available on the platform is best served by checking out the most like video . Still, if no source of lead generation should be ignored, this includes Tik Tok.
Note that we save the resulting video embed code as a WordPress option to avoid multiple requests to the oEmbed endpoint.
WordPress Shortcode
WordPress shortcode is as follows (download at the bottom of the page). The only required attribute is the URL of the video.
Copy and paste the WordPress function into your theme's functions.php file or, if you sensibly have one installed, your custom functions plugin.
If you require shortcode to work in a sidebar widget, you'll have to enable the functionality with a filter. If you're using our custom functions plugin, you'll have that feature enabled by default.
Conclusion
There is concern that Tik Tok is a Chinese company subject to the influence of an aggressive Government. In August of 2020 Donald Trump threatened to ban the application but that executive order was later overruled. It's quite possible that the application presents a broader security threat in the wake of decaying relations between China and the West (ironically, the application is banned in China). The raft of settlements paid by Tik Tok over allegations of theft of personal data tends to suggest that there's reason for concern.
