Ahh TikTok. You are a beast of a platform. Most downloaded. Top-grossing (re: consumer spending). And so, so addictive.
But even if you love using the app, to create content and grow your audience on TikTok can feel intimidating as heck.
That’s why we put together our top tips for TikTok growth with our Growth + Brand Coordinator Jessie Wootton. Keep reading if you’re trying to build your personal brand or sell your business on TikTok.
1. There is no "best day to post on TikTok"
…seriously.
What works for one account might not work for you. To grow, you need to experiment with the audience you have to see what works for them.
How can you find your best day to post on TikTok?
Create a TikTok schedule
Ideally, you want to look at data you already have from your audience (i.e. customer interviews) to find out when they go on social media, and TikTok specifically.
If you don’t have that info, that’s ok (though, forreal — you need to talk to your customers). Just start with a schedule that you think makes sense for your audience.
A teenager with a part-time job works on a different schedule than a new parent. Even then, don’t make assumptions. You might think your audience is more likely to engage with your content after work, but find that they’re actually the most active at lunch.
Here’s a sample schedule you can use:
Stick with your TikTok Schedule
You won’t get meaningful insight on your audience’s behaviour if you only run this experiment for one week.
Do this for at least one month, sticking to a consistent schedule, to get meaningful insight on how your audience behaves.
After one month of posting only in the mornings, you’re finding your engagement pretty low, switch it up. Or, if you’re posting both in the afternoon and at night, and find the evening gets the most engagement, you know to prioritise posts at night from here on out.
Experiment again
You didn’t think you’d only have this once, did you?
The whole point of this exercise is that it will help your audience grow. As it grows, you may find the habits of your average ideal customer has changed. The small sample size you have at the start of your journey might not behave in the same way as the larger audience you build over time.
Repeat these experiments at least once a year to get a sense of what your audience wants.
YOU’LL WANT TO FOLLOW @itssavannahjordan 👀
Savannah’s a seasoned marketer who runs her own agency. She offers tips and hella relatable content if you’re trying to grow your audience on TikTok. Follow her for tips on:
- Figuring out the best times to post on TikTok
- TikTok strategies for product-based businesses
- TikTok strategies for service-based businesses
- How to get more engagement on TikTok
2. Stay on top of the TikTok trends
“This can be a little tedious, I know. But knowing which viral sounds and videos were about to pop off gets you ahead of the curve to ride that lil trend wave.
If you see a sound starting to get a lot of use, try to incorporate it into a video when it still has under 20K uses. This is when we saw the most views on our trendy content.”
This tip has been echoed the most by TikTok growth experts, and especially accounts dedicated to helping businesses grow.
Engage with enough of them on TikTok, and you’ll start getting a stream of these helpful influencers sharing the latest audio clips to go viral.
So where can you find trending TikTok audio?
TikTok’s For You
This page is one of TikTok’s core features, and leverages their algorithm to show trending content to new users and hook you into their wild, wild world. Pay attention to any audio that keeps coming up in different videos, while paying attention to how much engagement the videos have. Keep in mind that your For You page won’t look the same as everyone else’s, so be sure to do some research (customer interviews, hello again), to find out what kind of content your audience sees most.
TikTok Search
You can search for sounds directly through TikTok by typing “trending audio” or “viral sounds” in search, then clicking the Sounds tab, where you can also see how many times that audio’s been used. Searching for hashtags like #trendingaudio and #viralaudio on TikTok to see videos using the most popular audio on the app. Since these videos are curated by users who might be using the hashtags to boost their own views, click the audio to see its use volume on TikTok.
TikTok’s Creative Centre
In TikTok’s Creative Centre, TikTok curates the trending sounds, hashtags and more to make creating viral videos easier than ever for users.
3. Get in the comments!
Engage with others’ content.
“Carve out 20-30 minutes a day to comment, like and share other creators' content, and start building some of those relationships. Or, go comment something sassy on Duolingo’s TikTok… if you get a reply you know you’ve made it.”
Here’s our checklist for the top three things to find the best TikTok accounts to comment on:
You share an audience
If you’re a vegan smoothie brand, your audience probably isn’t commenting on Burger King’s latest #WhopperDance. Find brands, influencers and regular folks on TikTok who are talking about the kinds of things that matter to your audience, and comment there.
They’ve got hella followers/engagement
Like Jessie said — Duolingo’s TikTok? It’s fire. Whether or not you’re in the business of learning a new language, getting engagement from their account won’t hurt because they have such a huge following.
But, if they don’t have a lot of followers, but have posts with good engagement, comment anyways. You’ll be tapping into an account that has a loyal following, and even if there’s less eyes on it, it’ll be those of people who really pay attention to what’s being said.
You’re solving a problem
At Growclass, one of our mantras is to talk about benefits, not features. It’s the difference between Calendly describing themselves as “a business communication platform helps teams to schedule meetings,” vs. “a hub for scheduling meetings that eliminates the hassle of back-and-forth emails.”
Tell people how you’re solving their problem. Then, when you see folks on TikTok talking about said problem (in Calendly’s case, endless emails to book meetings), swoop in and explain how you’ve got the solution 💁♀️
4. Ride the coattails of other TikToks
Comments aren’t the only place you can drive some serious engagement. TikTok has a couple of fun, easy ways you can build off the hype of other accounts’ high-performing videos.
Say you’re a marketing consultant that works with small business owners. Find videos where they’re complaining about things your services solve — like creating a social media strategy while running a biz full-time — and swoop in with a duet, or stitch.
You can also create videos with the express purpose of having people duet or stitch with you. Building off our example above, you could ask folks what their biggest social media marketing pet peeve is and have them stitch their videos to yours.
Same thing goes for you asking questions that people can then stitch to yours. Just starting out? Ain’t no shame in reaching out to friends to get them to engage.
So what is a TikTok duet, and how is it different from a TikTok stitch?
In a duet, your video plays side-by-side with the original video you’re dueting with. It’s like, well, a duet.
In a stitch, you have the original video play up to a certain point, from which your video will start. Stitching their video to yours, without having both play at the same time.
For both of these, you want to make sure your TikTok account is public.
How to make a TikTok Duet
- Tap the arrow icon on the right of the video you'd like to Duet.
- Tap Duet at the bottom.
- Choose from the filming options on the right.
- Tap the red button to start and stop your recording, then tap the check mark.
- Edit your video, then tap Next.
- Adjust your settings, write a caption, and tap Post.
How to make a TikTok Stitch:
- Tap the arrow icon on the right of the video you'd like to Stitch.
- Tap Stitch at the bottom.
- Choose the part of the video you'd like to Stitch, then tap Next.
- Choose from the filming options on the right.
- Tap the red button to start and stop your recording, then tap the check mark.
- Edit your video, then tap Next.
- Adjust your settings, write a caption, and tap Post.
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