TikTok is one of the hottest apps available right now. Each month, one billion people worldwide log onto the app and peruse their ‘for you’ pages, engaging with as much content as they see fit. The TikTok app is powered by engagement; those who receive more interaction on their posts will top the platform in terms of popularity.
Growing your TikTok account into one with a large follow-base can be tricky. Regularly posting, following trends and engaging with your audience can be brilliant for growth, but shooting into viral stardom organically is tough for most users. You could be doing many things on your path to TikTok fame, though. So, check out our top tips below and see how you could grow into the next viral TikTok star.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Identifying and understanding your target audience across your social platforms is crucial for brands that want to appeal to the masses. How else will you optimise your content and expect engagement if you don’t clearly understand who you’re interacting with?
There’s a chance for anyone to go viral on TikTok, so whilst your videos may reach users outside of your target audience profile, you should still aim to focus on that particular crowd of people as they’re usually the first to view your content. See how well your other posts are doing, and check out exactly who’s interacting with your videos. Whilst everyone wants to eventually gain thousands and thousands of followers, the first step should always be to find the right audience for your content.
2. Use Hashtags & Popular Songs
A great way to push your content out to a wider audience is to utilise trending hashtags and sounds. Once you include a certain hashtag in your post’s captions or a particular song to the video, those things become attached to your content, making your videos viewable to people searching those hashtags or sounds.
Using the correct hashtags or audio for your videos is crucial, as it shows you understand what’s currently trending and know how to use the app - it’s important not to look like you’re out of your depth and unaware of how the platform works.
3. Be Consistent
It’s no good to post once every blue moon. Being consistent with your content will seriously help with your levels of engagement. People are likely to follow accounts that regularly post fun, digestible content and keep the audience entertained.
We are also told exactly when it’s best to post each day. According to a study by Influencer Marketing Hub, you should be aiming to post at 9 am on a Tuesday, 12 am on a Thursday, or 5 am on Fridays. Granted, there are other times when it’s ideal for posting, but these are supposedly the three best times to upload content if you aim to generate high engagement levels.
4. Follow Trends & Engage with Challenges
You’ll find that many of the videos on TikTok aim to follow a particular trend or challenge. Trends are constantly changing, and it’s essential to make sure you’re up to date with the latest TikTok craze. Posting content that follows old trends isn’t something that’ll gain much traction, so prior research about what is and isn’t trending is important.
Participating in challenges is a great way to increase engagement and encourage interaction with your followers and other creators. Additionally, you could even try and create your own challenge, something that e.l.f. Cosmetics did. Five million videos and seven billion views later, their challenge still holds the title of being the most viral TikTok campaign ever.
5. Interact with Other Creators
The ability to ‘stitch’ or ‘duet’ other creators’ videos makes it so easy for multiple TikTokers to interact with each other and share content across a large audience. Simply commenting on other users’ videos encourages engagement and means you can interact with many people, thus opening the doorway for new followers.
Be Wary, Though…
TikTok is like any other social media platform; those who want to become famous will attempt many different things to get to that level. Something that’s been around for a while is the ability to purchase likes, views or followers. It’s a tricky thing though, and one you should be wary of if you attempt to go down that path.
Seeing an account rapidly gain followers or likes from just a few videos can look fake to many people. If someone gains thousands of followers overnight after not posting, it’s pretty obvious where all of those followers have come from. When this happens, it removes the idea of credibility behind an account and lets everyone know that their follower count isn’t legit. Some people may not care about this, but others would disapprove.
Various social media platforms state that they remove a certain number of inactive accounts each year. Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, and many others partake in occasional culls that drastically lower their users’ follower count. If you purchase followers on TikTok, these may eventually get removed a few weeks or months down the line, and you could potentially be wasting your money.
Buying likes, views or followers does not guarantee that your videos will appear on other users’ ‘for you’ pages. The TikTok algorithm is like-based, meaning that you’re likely to be served new videos that are similar to the ones you’ve engaged with. Purchasing views for certain videos do make them seem more popular, but your other videos must then rely on the TikTok algorithm to reach similar levels of engagement, and for smaller accounts, gaining views can be a “luck of the draw” thing.
There you have it. Hopefully, this quick guide can help on your journey to TikTok stardom. If you’re finding the platform boring and are in need of a new, fun TikTok video to engage with, make sure you give us a follow: @digitalmediateam_. Plus, if you’re looking to grow your brand through paid social, PPC or email marketing, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
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