ICYMI: 7 Things to Know About TikTok in 2026
🏷️ Take a deep breath, there's only so much you can do during this TikTok transition phase
Today’s TikTok deep dive — part of a special 2026 social strategy series — is made possible by Sprout Social!
ICYMI’s special 2026 Social Strategy series continues with a focus on TikTok, including an interview with strategist Greg Baroth — the man who put the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills TikTok account on the map.
Of course, it would be impossible to talk about TikTok without addressing the arrival of American TikTok and all its implications, including the app being largely unavailable to U.S. users within 24-36 hours of the transfer.
“I can’t do anything,” said Baroth when I asked him if he was concerned. “Whatever will be will be.”
A G&B Digital Management survey reflected a similar sentiment. More than half of the creators on the agency’s roster also plan to stay consistent on the app.
“I don’t expect brands or creators to notice much of a difference,” M&A advisor James Creech told me in advance of this weekend’s outage. “This is largely a change in governance behind the scenes rather than a shift in how the platform functions.”
But that was before the outage and speculation of censored political content. “RIP to a quarter of a million followers I had on TikTok,” wrote KC Steinbeck. Another creator told me, “It was fun while it lasted but I cannot see myself taking TikTok seriously anymore.” Meanwhile, comedian Meg Stalter posted plans to delete the app.
There are also concerns around TikTok’s new terms of service and privacy policy — especially the collecting and tracking of data around citizenship or immigration status, sexual life or sexual orientation and transgender or nonbinary status.
Collecting data is not new, but as University of Georgia professor Jess Maddox pointed out, the current administration’s attacks on these groups makes TikTok’s government-appointed board more concerning.
When I asked if you were more or less likely to use American TikTok, only 8% said you were highly or very likely to use the app under new management. A full 64% are less likely or not likely to use, while 28% are still undecided.
All this to say, the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC is a work in progress. While people in social like to say, “We move at the speed of culture,” this year’s pace is likely to be closer to a frantic fire drill.
Keep reading for tips, advice and insights on what to watch for on the all-new TikTok.
TIKTOK PLAYBOOK
2026 Social Cues + Clues: Fandoms, social commerce, alternative formats and search
Ask an Expert: Sol Betesh on TikTok’s series-based entertainment
Ask an Expert: Jenny McCoy on creator content dominating
Data Drop: What audiences are expecting to see from brands on TikTok
Brand Spotlight: The Beverly Hills Cheese Store
Your Source of Truth: People to follow for updates
Charts: Platform Comparisons and Audience Overlaps
1️⃣ SOCIAL CUES + CLUES
REAR VIEW
TikTok has really taken the “new year, new you” expression to heart. It stumbled into 2025 with an unforgettable 14-hour shutdown, yet the platform still managed to drive culture (and roll out updates) throughout the year.
TikTok improved desktop (February 2025)
Campus Verification (July 2025)
Creator Chat Rooms (July 2025)
Expanding Out of Phone program (July 2025)
TikTok Podcast Network (November)
Manage AI in the FYP (November 2025)
Bulletin Boards (November 2025)
“New Era, New Icons” awards (November 2025)
TikTok Shop BFCM (November 2025)
Nearby Feed (December 2025)
Shared Feed (December 2025)
LOOKING AHEAD
Fast forward to 2026 and TikTok’s latest “glitch” is thousands of reports of an outage on the platform. With new leadership in place and the company coming off months of regulatory distraction, this felt like a reset moment — though no one expected the app to actually go dark. Below are the signals that had emerged before the transfer of power on January 22, 2026. Expect TikTok to double down on a few — and quietly rethink others.
1. TikTok’s Fandom Playbook
TikTok is already a super app in China, offering everything from livestreaming and e-commerce to food delivery and travel bookings. To win its way into the hearts and minds of Americans, it’s been partnering with sports and entertainment franchises to become a hub for dedicated fandoms.
Look no further than the Fandom Without Borders Entertainment Summit in August 2025 and The Future of Sports Fandom summit in September 2025.
While ByteDance lawyers were busy hammering out a divestiture plan, the biz dev team has been striking deals with everyone from Major League Soccer and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation to Fandango and Disney.
TikTok recently launched Game Plan, an in-app destination for sports fans to discover official accounts, check schedules and standings, buy tickets, add games to their calendars and create their own content.
Similarly, TikTok partnered with the likes of Fandango and Disney to create immersive movie hubs and experiences around films like Avatar and Tron.
Just last week, the company activated at the Sundance Film Festival and used the opportunity to announce two new ad solutions designed to help streaming platforms and entertainment studios drive subscriptions and ticket sales.
Takeaway: TikTok isn’t just chasing sports and entertainment — it’s building infrastructure for fandom. If the platform is organizing around shared interests, rituals, and identities, ask yourself: What does fandom look like in our category?
2. Betting On Podcasts
TikTok is taking a page from YouTube, turning interview series into podcasts. And let’s be honest — by 2026, almost any content with audio could qualify as one.
The platform partnered with iHeartMedia to launch the multiplatform TikTok Podcast Network, distributing shows across iHeart’s platforms while promoting them on TikTok through clips. The deal also includes co-branded, state-of-the-art podcast studios in Los Angeles, New York, and Atlanta.
And there’s more: TikTok is launching a live podcast series, TikTok In The Mix, sponsored by T-Mobile, and partnering with well-known hosts like Mel Robbins to stream interactive shows using TikTok LIVE.
The Takeaway: TikTok is doubling down on live streaming, and alternative formats. It may have sparked the short-form video revolution, but the platform is clearly pushing beyond it — and will likely reward brands willing to experiment.
3. TikTok Shop Grows Up
TikTok claims Shop had its strongest Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2025, with nearly 50% more U.S. shoppers than the year before and more than $500 million in sales across categories including fashion, beauty, home, luxury resale, food, and books.
It’s been a slow burn, but for brands, this momentum is a clear signal that TikTok-driven commerce is here to stay.
“It’s something that we are all heads down plotting out for this year,” one digital marketing leader told me. “TikTok Shop is in the conversation for all teams because of the reach, awareness, and ad revenue we’ve seen it generate.”
But with TikTok’s U.S. future secured, the app is also making some swift changes. Retailers were just notified that Seller Shopping will no longer be allowed, according to an email obtained by Adweek. Starting in March, U.S. merchants will need to fulfill orders through the platform’s proprietary logistics services.
The Takeaway: Brands should start planning for TikTok as a first-party commerce platform, not just a traffic driver. The opportunity is built-in scale and discovery. The tradeoff: TikTok will increasingly own more of the commerce stack.
4. TikTok LIVE Is the Front Door
TikTok LIVE may be one of the most underused — and most powerful — parts of the platform heading into 2026. In combination with TikTok Shop, LIVE gives brands and creators a way to show up in real time, build community, and feel human in a feed that’s increasingly optimized for speed and scale.
The key is not to overproduce. TikTok says live streaming performs best when it feels unscripted, interactive, and responsive — a sentiment echoed by LIVE Creator of the Year nominee Kira Lise.
Lise told me she plans a loose flow rather than a script, regularly reintroduces herself for new viewers, and prioritizes acknowledging the people who show up night after night. (Sidebar: the platform connected me to Lise, a sure sign of the support they’re putting behind streamers.)
The Takeaway: Treat TikTok LIVE as a relationship-builder, not a broadcast channel. The strongest LIVE strategies in 2026 will feel casual, consistent, and community-first — tapping into creators who know how to engage with audiences in real time.
5. Search + Comments Drive Conversion
In 2026, TikTok discovery doesn’t stop at the feed — it continues in search bars and comment sections. More users are searching on TikTok before they buy, using it as a research engine as much as an entertainment platform.
The comments section, in particular, has become one of TikTok’s most influential surfaces: it’s where skepticism gets addressed, context gets added, and purchase decisions are often made.
This dynamic shows up most clearly in TikTok LIVE and Shop. LIVE comments actively shape what happens next in real time, while Shop content succeeds when it answers the exact questions people are already asking. In many cases, a creator’s reply in the comments can be more persuasive than the original video itself.
The Takeaway: Treat search and comments as conversion tools, not afterthoughts. In 2026, TikTok strategies are driven by pro-active engagement, including strong comment moderation, FAQ-style LIVE moments around real search intent, and Shop content designed to answer questions — not just showcase products.
2️⃣ SPROUT SOCIAL DATA DROP
For Gen Z, TikTok isn’t just a social network. It’s a search engine, news source, birthplace of culture and a shopping mall. TikTok is the top channel for product discovery among Gen Z, with 44% of young people interacting with brand content on the platform multiple times per day, according to Sprout Social’s 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report.
To learn even more about what to prioritize in 2026, sign up to be first to receive Sprout Social’s 2026 Social Media Content Strategy Report when it launches later this month.
3️⃣ ASK AN EXPERT: BRANDED CONTENT
TikTok remains the cultural engine of social video, Fallen Media CEO and Co-Founder Sol Betesh told me.
Content that succeeds on TikTok generally travels well across other platforms, while the reverse is rarely true, said Betesh. Looking ahead to 2026, he predicts authentic, low-effort content will continue to dominate your TikTok playbooks, with 60 seconds or less still outperforming.
“We launched Step to the Mic six months ago. It’s almost at a million followers. It’s very difficult to do that on Instagram,” he said. According to Sol, TikTok still offers a higher follower conversion rate — but only if creators give audiences a clear reason to follow. View count alone isn’t enough. The strongest performers are shows and concepts that audiences immediately understand and want to return to.
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When I asked what he’d tell brands heading into 2026, Sol came back to the same idea: series-based entertainment is the real growth driver. Audiences follow accounts when they recognize the format, understand the concept, and expect future episodes. Brands need to think more like showrunners — building content worth returning to — rather than chasing one-off viral moments.
“When we’re talking to brands, that’s what we tell them: make content that people want to come back to see again and again.”
He also believes trend-hacking is largely overdone — and rarely effective for brands. Trends move too fast and are often stale by the time brands jump in, unless you’re one of the few exceptions like Duolingo. Instead, standout performance comes from original, entertaining content that algorithms can distribute naturally.
Looking ahead to 2026, Sol said brands will need to embed themselves inside creator-led storytelling rather than interrupt it.
“At the end of the day, it’s all entertainment,” he said. “You have to be very entertaining — even more so on TikTok than Instagram. On Instagram, you have Stories and static posts. On TikTok, all you’ve got is video.”
- Sol Betesh is Co-Founder & CEO at Fallen Media. His company has a track record of producing its own viral hit shows and branded content for Fortune 500 companies across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
4️⃣ ASK AN EXPERT: PAID SOCIAL
With TikTok continuing to blur the lines between social, search, and AI-driven discovery, I asked goodhelp Founder Jenny McCoy what brands should be paying attention to in 2026.
“Brands that are experimenting with search ads on TikTok are in the fast lane when it comes to understanding the continued convergence of social, search, and AI search,” she told me.
As more brands attempt to fast-track production and reduce costs with AI, she expects a widening gap. “Creator content to continue to be the dominant ad creative approach, but as more brands try to fast track and reduce cost via AI, the brands that invest further in more custom, native-feeling creator content will pull ahead.”
That’s especially on a platform where audiences are quick to spot anything that feels templated or inauthentic.
Jenny McCoy is the Founder and Lead Strategist at goodhelp and author Wednesday Morning newsletter.
5️⃣ BRAND SPOTLIGHT: BEVERLY HILLS CHEESE STORE
If you’ve spent time on TikTok lately, you might have seen a clip from the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Over the past year, the brand’s strategy shifted from static posts to video-first storytelling, with cheesemongers positioned as the store’s main characters, supported by cheese wheels and butter.
“Everybody loves cheese but everybody REALLY loves butter,” social strategist Greg Baroth told me. And the strategy shift has paid off. The business has 1M followers across social — racking up 50 million views on TikTok alone in last 2 months — all while driving real-world impact. Customers regularly walk into the store referencing specific videos, asking for cheesemonger selfies, and even flying in from abroad to take cheese home in their luggage.
Name: Greg Baroth
Brand: The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills
Platform: TikTok
Frequency: Usually 1x a day but sometimes twice
ICYMI: How would you describe your creative approach on TikTok?
Greg Baroth: An educational break from doom scrolling. Calming, interesting, positive videos about cheese and other delicious things. No brain rot, but a little mold.
ICYMI: Who’s your audience on TikTok, and how does that shape what you create?
GB: TikTok says we’re 60% male 40% female. Honestly who TikTok says is our audience has nothing to do with the content we create and I would also argue that it feels like more women are watching the content and commenting on it than men, which is interesting to see. Location-wise we do have a bit of a following in the Philippines and we’ve seen people come into the store from there, take photos with our cheesemongers and also take cheese back on the plane with them!
ICYMI: What is actually working for you on the platform right now?
GB: A couple things seem to be working right now and that’s cutting open cheese (the bigger the wheel the better) and figuring out a few key repeatable sayings and things to do in said videos that you do every time that people get used to and watch out for. I also think posting every day helps and that’s very important to do.
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(This video got 4 million views this week alone)
ICYMI: How does TikTok as a platform serve you and the cheese store’s goals versus the other platforms?
GB: I have actually been creating first for TikTok as a platform and then repurposing content across all over. TikTok is usually the one that content will do best on (with exception of YouTube Shorts) and usually if a video does well on TikTok it will also do well on the other platforms. And if it doesn’t do well, that content probably won’t do all that well on others.
ICYMI: As we head into 2026, are you doubling down on what’s working or planning to experiment with something different?
GB: I think we’ve got the short form content down but want to figure out a long form content play on YouTube for 2026. One thing we actually don’t do much of is trends, and I think that’s one thing that sets us apart from the many other restaurant brands that are doing those.
Avoiding trends was not really a conscious decision but it was more so just wanting to establish our own recognizable way of making content that people would enjoy. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy when I see restaurants make their funny version of “you thought we were gonna throw this sandwich out, but we’re not that type of place” video but we wanted to really focus on showcasing the store, our cheesemongers, products, and people.
ICYMI: If you could give other brands one non-negotiable rule for making content people actually care about on TikTok, what would it be?
GB: At the end of the day you just have to make “good content” and what your audience decides is “good” is the trial and error you have to figure out.
ICYMI: What’s the biggest mistake you see brands making on TikTok and how should they avoid it?
GB: The biggest problem with TikTok and brands is just that you need a person, a face, someone recognizable on camera and repeatable and that an audience can get attached to. That could be the CEO. The C-Suite, or the “social media person” but you’ve got to have someone on camera being the face. And one thing you can’t control is if the general public likes that person! Which is a challenge I’ve faced working with other brands on the platform.
6️⃣ Source of Truth
If you’re looking for the most credible TikTok sources for news and the latest platform changes, then you’ll want to follow the platform’s dedicated accounts and regularly updated newsroom. So far, none of the U.S. leaders (eg. CEO Adam Presser or CSO Will Farrell) are posting on TikTok — or anywhere else.
Keep an eye on the following pages:
Global CEO Shou Chew’s TikTok Account
TikTok X Account (@TikTokusdsjv is the only official account sharing updates during the outage)
TikTok Account
TikTok Creators Account
TikTok Tips Account
TikTok for Business TikTok Account
TikTok for Business YouTube Account
TikTok Newsroom Website (this may not be the most recent version)
TikTok USDSJV Newsroom Website
Creators to Watch
These aren’t your traditional creators but since the platform is changing so fast, these are the journalists, academics and tech developers helping track and make sense of platform updates:
7️⃣ SAME BUT DIFFERENT
Nearly every major platform now offers short-form video, and on the surface the formats look interchangeable. But TikTok remains the outlier. While others copied the format, TikTok built the behavior.
TikTok is the home of short-form, personality-driven video — and the engine of internet culture. With more than 1.6 billion monthly active users, it’s where trends are born, creators break out, and brands try to keep up with the speed of culture.
And even as it’s future appeared murkey, TikTok continued to grow: 37% of U.S. adults reported using the platform in 2025, which is up from 21% in 2021, and 39% of Gen Z consumers plan to use TikTok more in 2026, up from 37% overall.
*Audience Overlaps inspired by a chart from GWI and Meltwater in the 2026 Global Digital Report
This post planted a thought in my head so I had to come back and find it - the chart with audiene overlap and shared audience rates is so fascinating and really helpful as a creator. DHave you seen any other data for platforms like Substack? Selfishly, Substack is one of my main pillars for my content plan so I want figure out how the conversation rate is for it and other platforms like IG or YT
Curious as to why the platform comparisons don't include Facebook, as we still see an audience there, certainly skews older but still engaged.