Digital youth charity The Mix details how it became a success on TikTok and gained over 2.8m views along the way
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As a digital youth charity, The Mix’s mission is to be the first place any young person turns to drive positive change in their lives and the world around them. The long-term effects of the pandemic, cost of living crisis and global issues such as climate change and war are fuelling a mental health crisis, where The Mix’s services are needed now more than ever. This is why we launched an innovative new TikTok service last year, to provide free, accessible, and confidential support to young people, on the channel they most use.

Overcoming challenges launching a new channel

The Mix faced several challenges that come with launching a new TikTok channel, from how to establish processes and creating enough content to post, to how to amplify our channel with no following, and how to safeguard our new community.

To overcome these, we needed to involve every team at The Mix, from marcomms to data, youth voice, services, safeguarding, fundraising and senior management, as well as activating our networks of partners, volunteers, and young people. This allowed us to co-design, co-create and launch a brand new TikTok service based on data, insights, and expertise, establish new community guidelines and safeguarding processes, and create a wide range of impactful TikToks from young people, experts, influencers, and staff.

How did we launch the channel?

Youth voice is always at the heart of everything The Mix does, so we co-designed our TikTok strategy, launch, content, activations, and collaborations directly with young people. We ensured they provided their TikTok expertise throughout the process and implemented their ideas, so we knew it would be a space young people would want to use. Through training and support, we also empowered young volunteers to produce TikToks for essential peer-to-peer support.

To ensure we were able to support as many young people as possible, we launched small but targeted ad campaigns to amplify our content to a broad and diverse audience of young people. We also collaborated with a wide range of partners to provide the best expert support for a wide range of topics and recruited influencers to create support TikToks for our channel as well as their own, allowing us to reach new audiences.

To build an active TikTok community, we responded to key moments throughout the year, producing strategic and engaging content, activations, and campaigns with bespoke support as and when it was needed. We also created content for diverse communities of young people, from LGBTQIA+ to BIPOC, young carers, and young people with disabilities.

Highlights from The Mix’s first year on TikTok

As well as providing “always-on” and reactive TikTok support year-round, The Mix delivered a series of campaigns at key moments.

• Cost of living support from managing your money well to how to make a budget and paying debts from money influencer Quoy (209,000+ views, 14,000+ engagements) and a 'tips to save money this winter' staff TikTok (115,700+ views, 3,000+ engagements).
• Peer-to-peer revision and exam support from young people, including study days, maintaining focus, exam meditation and exam day morning routines (315,000+ views, 8,600+ engagements).
• Expert drugs support to reduce stigma and inform including 'what is Ecstasy', 'what is Ketamine' and 'what is Heroin' (1,230,000+ views, 123,500+ engagements).
• Youth-led support from: 'opening up about our mental health' to 'eating disorders', 'celebrating Black History Month', 'alternatives to university', 'representation of the LGBTQIA+ community', '5 signs you might be a young carer', 'coping with loneliness' and 'why men don’t ask for support'.

Successes & impact for young people

For the first time, twice as much support is being accessed on our TikTok (2.8 million views within a year) compared to The Mix’s website and 2,000+ support articles (1.4 million visitors annually), where we’ve rapidly responded to the trend of young people wanting to receive information and services directly on the channels, whenever and wherever they need it.

In just a year since launching The Mix’s new TikTok service channel (28 April 2022 – 27 April 2023), we have achieved:

• 115 TikToks
• 2,800,000+ views
• 158,000+ engagements
• 16,200+ followers
• 9.3+ months watch time

Not only are young people receiving impactful and diverse support as and when they need it, we are also building an engaged community where over 16,200 people have followed The Mix to make sure future TikToks appear in their feed. The results of The Mix’s most recent annual user survey further highlights the effectiveness of our social media support for young people where:

• 91% found information and advice shared relevant to them
• 85% said they were more likely to seek support when they needed it
• 87% felt more capable to make decisions about their situation or issue
• 87% felt like a part of a community

“Apart from a small advertising budget, The Mix’s TikTok has been an organic, free platform for reaching, engaging, and supporting millions of young people – contributing to The Mix’s highest ever impact by total reach.” says Harry Philippson, head of marketing and communications at The Mix.

“The rapid success of our new TikTok services has also led to new areas of funding, where corporates and foundations have invested in The Mix’s TikTok channel, campaigns, and content across a range of issues and topics, which will help to continue providing vital information, support, and services to even more young people.”

To find out more about The Mix, head to themix.org.uk or follow @TheMixUK on TikTok.

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