Believe it or not, the first step to growing on TikTok is not to make content. It is to study the platform. If you want to dominate a platform, you have to know the ins and outs of that platform. What makes it breathe? What makes it come to life?
How do you study TikTok? By consuming the content from a strategic approach instead of a mindless approach.
TikTok is a video app that is designed to suck us in, to scroll for hours on end, and succeeds in doing that. It’s important to look at it with a detailed eye and see what content is coming up on our feed, rather than just watching it for entertainment and flicking through.
Question to ask yourself
- What videos capture your attention?
- What keeps you watching a video?
- What makes you scroll past content?
- At what point does the video get boring? How can you improve that?
- What makes you share a video with someone else?
Tip: Spend 30 minutes a day studying the platform instead of mindlessly scrolling
Studying will help you to gain ideas for your own content to create.
Table of Contents
Prepare Your Profile
A problem that a lot of people do is jumping straight into uploading content. But what happens when a video goes viral and you don’t get any followers? There is obviously a disconnect happening from your videos to your profile.
How can you convince someone to follow you by just glancing at your page? or at least increase the percentage of people on your profile.
Username
Your profile and username need to be clear on who you are and what you want to be known for. If you want to be known for cooking delicious food, then your username will be something like @itplivecooks with a profile picture of you eating food.
The name at the top of the page is a step most people miss, but it’s extremely search friendly. If you go to TikTok right now and type in simple recipes, then click on users, anyone who has the term simple recipes in their name will appear in the search results.
What’s the phrase that summarises what people are likely to type into the search engine and come across your account?
Bio
TikTok allows 80 characters in your bio which doesn’t feel like a lot compared to Instagram’s 150. The most common mistake that people make with their bio, is making it about themselves.
Example: Wifey, mother of two with a fur baby
Instead, what works well for influencers, creators, and businesses is communicating the value that you and your page provide when someone presses the follow button.
Example:
- Influencer Marketing daily news
- Daily Fashion Trends
- Teaching you how to become an influencer
- Social media tips
All of these profiles show what someone will gain if they follow you. It’s like a marketing strategy. Humans subconsciously think about themselves so when they click follow on a profile, they are thinking how is this going to benefit me?
Bio = How someone will benefit from you = follow
Link
Once you hit 1,000 followers, you will be able to add a link to your profile. For influencers and content creators that want to grow their profile, then the link should be either to an email list with a freebie or a link where you can be making money for example an affiliate program.
Email lists are so important for when anything happens to your social media or you would like to get more into the business side, then you have an email list to communicate all of that too. It takes less than 24 hours to create, and make sure to include a freebie so you can grow the list.
Pick A Niche
It is impossible to teach you how to grow without tackling this important part first. Do you have to pick a niche to be successful, no, especially for TikTok where the algorithm is different. But it does help more if you pick a niche.
If you post videos about coffee, then TikTok will categorise your content and show it to other people who like, search for, or post about coffee. Whereas if you’re posting anything and everything then it is a lot harder for Instagram to understand who you are, what you do, and ultimately, who to push your content to.
How does one pick a niche?
Niche is a specialised segment of the market. This is where you get categories like fitness, wellness, fashion, beauty etc. But you want to get even more specific. For example, if you’re in the fitness niche, then what type of fitness? Who are you creating your fitness videos for?
A defined niche will therefore look something like this:
- At home fitness for mums
- Budget-friendly travel ideas to go on
- Amazon fashion for women
What if you don’t want to pick a niche because you are a multi-passionate person and don’t know how to narrow down your niche?
You can focus more on the WHO instead of the WHAT. Who do you want to reach and why do you want to reach them? What would that person want to see?
Creating Content: Ideas
If you don’t want to be strategic, or you feel like being strategic is stopping you from creating then don’t pick a niche and just create. As soon as you create and upload, you will start to see and see what is true and authentic to you.
Enjoy the creative process of discovering who you are as a content creator and influencer.
3 Type of Content
- Evergreen/Search Friendly
- Trending
- YOU Content
Search Friendly
This is content that is not reliable on trends and is content that is always going to be helpful no matter when you post it. Another example is recipes – recipes are evergreen and can be used anytime.
If you want to get ideas on how to find this evergreen content, then you search engines. Type in your niche or industry on TikTok and see what comes up. See what the recommendations are and tap on an item. There is even a section at the bottom that says “Others searched for,” which will give you video ideas.
Another way to research is by going onto answerthepublic.com where you are limited to 2-3 searches a day. Just type in the keyword and the system will give you top searches using that word.
Include a CTA at the end of these videos.
Trending Content
Trending videos help you get views and a spike in traction. A way to keep up with trends is searching on TikTok for hashtags like #TrendAlert, and #TrendWatch and finding creators who only post “Hey, this is a trend coming out.” You want to be one of the first originators.
YOU Content
This is where you get to be whoever you want to be and post whatever you want to. Your audience can get to know you, and no they might not perform well in the beginning, but creative freedom helps your mental health and burnout. Casual content helps you build a community and connection with your followers.
Tip: Create a series to help your feed be like a binge-able Netflix show
Getting Organised: Create A Content Calendar
Create your own collections for future videos you want to make or save trending audio that you want to use. Take all of the ideas and the ones in your head or on your phone and go to your laptop.
Creating a calendar can help you keep all of your ideas in one place so you can visually see what videos you’re working on and when you want them to go up. If you’re someone who hates being on your phone all the time and wants to get more organised, then let your laptop store your ideas and be your creative mind space.
How Long Should Your Videos Be?
The video length that performs well for you will be different for someone else. A fitness video performs best when they are over 2 minutes long versus if you’re doing a smoothie recipe which can be shorter.
Think about your topic and purpose. If you’re trying to educate, then you probably won’t be able to do it in 20 seconds. There is no magic number, and just depends on the content that you’re creating.
How Often Should You Post
The more you post the more you grow. Consistency is everything but doesn’t mean you have to post every day as that can lead to burnout. If you have a team of people, then yes, do it, but if not then choose the days you want to post a week and stick to it.
You want your audience and followers to be familiar with your profile and be excited for when you post, knowing a post is coming. Again, the more you post, the more you will see your following grow. Try to challenge yourself if you can and be realistic.
What Hashtags Should You Use?
You want to use hashtags relevant to:
- What your video is about
- What your video looks like visually
- Who you are
If you do a Day in the Life video, the first thing is what the video is about – #dayinmylife #dayinmylifeasinfluencer #influencerlife.
Visually, what’s in the video? Let’s say there is a YouTube set up so #YouTubeSetUp. Maybe you show your coffee #CoffeeRecipe as it’s visually there.
What is your profile about is who you are so #influencer #contentcreator.
To help you find relevant hashtags, you need to look up your niche or industry on TikTok and then go onto the hashtag tabs to find what’s relevant to your niche or industry.
Common Mistakes
Stop trying to go viral every time you post. Instead of thinking of what value you are giving to your followers. If you can create content that is edutaining, inspirational, and relatable then you are doing good and that’s where your 80% of energy should go.
Deleting Posts
When you delete posts, you’re deleting data and the algorithm that was building up your account of who you are. Enjoy the creative process and leave your videos where you are.
Not going back to study your posts
Do this monthly. Study your posts and study analytics. What posts performed well? What didn’t perform well? How can you make the posts better? How can you recreate success?
If a video doesn’t do well, then maybe there needs to be a shift in something or a small tweak to make it better. You’re not looking at what succeeded and what failed, but you’re looking at what your audience enjoys and how can I improve my content to cater to what my audience values.
Using Irrelevant Hashtags
Stay relevant to the video to help TikTok recognise your content.
Not Replying To Comments
It shows you’re building genuine relations and building a community. When you reply to comments, you’re feeding TikTok algorithms as you’re telling TikTik that the video is getting engagement. Try to reply to comments with a video and make it a series because if it goes viral, they will be a chain reaction to the next video, and the next.
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