Sophia Smith Galer: Journalism's Rising TikTok Star
Sophia Smith Galer from BBC World Service spoke exclusively to Interhacktives about her rise in the TikTok community.
What makes Sophia Smith Galer’s audiences tik? With nearly 50,000 followers on TikTok, the faith and ethics video journalist hasn’t been recognised on New York’s subway without good reason.
Formerly a City Journalism trainee, she forms a growing collective of journalists using the video platform. Fellow TikTok-ers include the Telegraph’s Francesco Zaffarano and the Washington Post’s Dave Jorgenson. Here, she gives Interhacktives her hot-take:
Your TikTok video on pronouncing the Arabic letter ق (Qaf) attracted almost 600,000 views on TikTok! Why do you think this video went viral?
Sophia Smith Galer: I can’t speak from a BBC perspective really as the BBC doesn’t have an editorial news presence on TikTok, but personally, I’ve found there’s definitely a space for inspiring content around language learning and the work journalists do every day – you can see that clearly from the success of Dave Jorgenson at Washington Post.
What tips would you give to journalists looking to grow their newsroom’s presence on TikTok?
My tips are to have someone in your team who is given the space to dedicate a good half of their working day to consuming TikTok content in order to work out what’s already out there and find a space where your brand can flourish and CRUCIALLY not just copy other people’s stuff! Importantly you have to work out how to be funny and smart and engaging without bringing the brand into disrepute or taking the brand away from its main aims.
You also created and grew the BBC World Service’s Instagram page from scratch – what strategies are important for engaging people?
It doesn’t matter whether it’s TikTok or Instagram – successful content will engage highly with your target audience. So many publishers and journalists don’t even know how to describe their target audience but at the BBC World Service, we’re encouraged from Day 1 to learn our audiences back to front and it shows in the success of our digital content.
If you can’t get enough of TikTok after this interview, check out our Interhacktives article on 6 reasons why you should join TikTok.
