Will TikTok’s New 10-minute Video Be Useful for Real Estate Marketing?

When it launched, TikTok only allowed users to upload 15 seconds videos. In time, this limit increased to 60 seconds, followed by 3 minutes last year in July. And the users seemed to enjoy the change enough to determine TikTok to increase the video-length limit again, now to 10 minutes. 

Indeed, a TikTok spokesperson on Monday confirmed that in the next few weeks, it would roll out this major change globally:

“Today, we’re excited to start rolling out the ability to upload videos that are up to 10 minutes, which we hope would unleash even more creative possibilities for our creators around the world.”

But in doing so, the platform strays too far from its short-form origin users seemed to love and competitors emulated. If you remember, YouTube responded to TikTok’s increased popularity by launching YouTube Shorts. Instagram followed in August 2020 with Instagram Reels, giving its users the capability to “record and edit 15-second multi-clip videos with audio, effects, and new creative tools.”

Then, Facebook Reels launched in September 2021, which gave users the capability to “create reels and have their Instagram reels suggested to people on Facebook.” 

Even Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat copied the short-form video idea from TikTok, which begs the question, why 10 minutes now?

In December 2021, TikTok published a lengthy blog post glorifying how creators are “changing the game with longer videos on TikTok.” It was about how effective three-minute videos were in getting views:

“Videos longer than one minute receive over 5 billion views globally, and we’ve been blown away by our community’s creativity as it’s shared longer-form content of all kinds – from podcasts to vlogs, to cooking tutorials, fashion commentary, and more.”

But the 10-minute limit is a bit of a stretch. While the focus on the “creators” may seem altruistic, the hypothesis that TikTok wants to draw advertisers by becoming a powerful YouTube contender makes more sense since YouTube earned $28.8 billion from ads in 2021. 

But Is It Right for Real Estate Marketing?

The question remains: Can real estate marketers benefit from TikTok’s new 10-minute video length?

The short question is yes: any savvy marketer can use any available tools to drive brand awareness, leads, and revenue. 

The possibilities are endless. Real estate marketers can use long-format TikTok videos for house tours, educational content, neighborhood guides, Q&As, interviews, and all kinds of engaging and persuasive content. Besides, 10-minutes is just the limit: videos can remain as short as their creators want them to be. 

If you want to try out the new feature for your real estate business, and you already have a TikTok account, “make sure you are using the latest version of TikTok before trying out the feature on your app or on tiktok.com.” Since this feature will roll in the following weeks, users must wait for notifications before testing it.