Following what he calls a mix of “a gut feeling and an understanding of the potential of the platform,” Jorgenson, who’s been with the Post since June 2017, pitched company management his idea for the TikTok account last spring. He eventually got the go-ahead, and now spends about half his work day focusing on conceptualizing, producing and uploading videos to the platform, and responding to user comments there as well.
Jorgenson’s TikTok efforts have translated into 400,000 subscribers to the Post’s account, and tens of millions of video views. Not bad performance on a platform that was launched internationally just two-and-a-half years ago, and whose active American usership numbers about 27 million — 60% of which is aged between 16 and 24.
Micah Gelman (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
“We are reaching people who we want to really build a brand connection with,” says Micah Gelman, director of video at the Post. Even though many of TikTok’s users are too young to have their own credit cards, Gelman says, “We hope that as they grow up they’ll have a real brand affinity for the Washington Post, and convince their parents that they need a subscription maybe in the meantime.”
