All semester my ads have been catching people who were already searching. Somebody types decide what movie to watch with friends and my ad shows up right when they want it. Social media flips that. On TikTok nobody is looking for my app they are just scrolling, so I cant catch intent that isn't there yet. I have to make something worth stopping for first.
That tied back to something I said in the discussion this week, that people don't want to feel sold to. My cold traffic numbers back it up. When I picked TikTok for the prepare assignment I built the content around the "nobody can agree on what to watch" problem instead of just dropping my link, because the content has to earn attention before the app ever comes up.
What surprised me is how social loops back into SEO. Posts and shares can send signals and links that help a site rank, so the two aren't as separate as I figured.