With the future of TikTok up in the air, some Tennesseans are voicing concerns about the state of their small businesses and social media influence.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed into law a bipartisan foreign aid bill that provides $95 billion in military aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The bill also includes a provision that requires TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell a majority stake of the platform to an American company by January 2025 or be banned in the United States, citing national security concerns.
ByteDance has threatened to sue the federal government, and Al Jazeera reports that the company would rather see the platform end U.S. service than sell TikTok.
Tennessee’s senior U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn has been a vocal critic of TikTok and the company's plans to open a Nashville office. Even so, she and fellow Sen. Bill Hagerty voted against the bill, which overwhelmingly passed the Senate before Biden signed it into law. On Wednesday, when asked by Scene sister publication The News to address the concerns from small businesses related to a potential ban or forced sale of the app, Blackburn avoided directly addressing the concerns of business owners. She instead redirected to privacy and national security concerns related to “the Chinese Communist Party” and American users' data being “held in Beijing.”
Around 170 million Americans use the free video-sharing app, including Brentwood podcaster Jennifer Vickery Smith. Smith’s Got It From My Momma podcast launched in fall 2022 and has featured interviews with the mothers of entertainers and other celebrities, including country musician Kelsea Ballerini and the Kansas City Chiefs’ star quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Smith posts interview clips on social media platforms including Instagram and Facebook in hopes of leading viewers to her full podcast interviews. She began using TikTok to promote her podcast in spring 2023.
In April, Tennessee banned Chinese-owned apps from use on public college campuses — and further restrictions could be coming
“TikTok is one of the easiest ways to grow a social media presence,” Smith tells the Scene. “Being someone who hosts a podcast talking to moms, I just didn't really think that was my audience, but the more I looked into it, I realized, ‘Wow, so many people are on TikTok, and that is the way that a lot of people discover new things.’ It's not just for the silly dances and lip-synching.”
“I was very shocked at how quickly we started seeing growth on TikTok, as opposed to the other platforms,” Smith says. As of this writing, her podcast has just over 3,000 followers on Instagram and 19,000 on TikTok.
Smith says she would be “disappointed” to see TikTok shut down, not only since it's been a boost to her business, but also as a creative platform that’s connected her to people, especially young people.
For other online creators like Katie Wolf — a book editor and book coach who recently moved from Nashville to South Carolina — TikTok is an even bigger piece of their business. Wolf started using TikTok during the pandemic, posting videos about the writing process. At the time, she was working as a freelance editor. Wolf has since taken her editing and coaching job full time, and she credits the app for bringing in about 80 percent of her business traffic.
“I got my first client from TikTok probably two months after I started making videos there, and that was a huge part of what led to me being able to quit my day job and take this business full time,” says Wolf.
“If TikTok hadn't come around, it probably would have taken me a lot longer to go full time, and I honestly don't know if I ever would have,” she says. “It gave me that confidence to be able to take that leap, and transition into doing this full time, and I definitely would not have had that without Tiktok.”
Now that the app's future is in limbo, some creators are questioning and adapting their growth strategies. Some say they’re diversifying their presence on other social media platforms and email lists, and encouraging their audiences to connect with them in ways beyond TikTok.
“I've even had the sense myself, even the last few days of, ‘Should I even be creating content on TikTok?’” Wolf says. “‘Should I even bother focusing my efforts on a platform where I'm not sure if it's going to be around this time next year?’”
Some creators like Wolf, who says she contacted her senators in South Carolina, have also expressed frustration over what the federal government is and isn't prioritizing.
“I think I'm honestly still kind of wrestling with it,” Wolf says. “Thinking about if TikTok does get banned, I think I'm gonna have to do a bit of soul-searching and think about what my priorities should be, how I'll go about them and what the future of my business looks like.”
