What a time to be alive. These past few weeks have been crazy and we can only hope everyone is staying safe, inside and healthy. Currently I am in New York City, which is being hit the hardest. We are doing our best to stay positive and busy throughout it all. One of the many ways Americans (and people all over the world) have been staying busy and entertained is through the app Tiktok! Which at first started out as the app of choice for the Gen Z’ers but has quickly stolen many Millennials hearts, as we are all trying to find a little laughter during this time.
As a 26 year old trying to navigate the app, a few of you have asked me to share what it is I know and love about Tiktok. I am NO EXPERT but I can definitely share a few things to do and not to do when starting out. Note that a lot of what I mention below I learned via this TechCrunch article. So feel free to reference it throughout!
*You can also follow me on the app @ username: @courtseamoney
TIP ONE: TikTok does not praise original content. This will be hard to understand and grasp for any blogger/content creator coming from success on Instagram. The reason being, that Instagram LOVES and PRAISES original creative content (which is why creative people excel so much on the app), whereas TikTok does not. The point of TikTok is to copy others. The way their algorithm is set up is that they want new creators, starting out on the app, to take what is trending on their for you page (which is the equivalent to the Instagram explore page) and for people to copy it. At this point TikTok already has their trendsetters which create the original content like Charlie D’amelio (a 15 year old with 41 million + followers lol), then they want us common people to make it trending with our recreations. Does that make sense?!
TIP TWO: The For You Page is your new BFF. As we covered above the FYP (for you page) is the equivalent to the Instagram explore page. Your #1 goal on TikTok (if you are a creator) is to get on the FYP! The #1 way to do that is by following what is trending on the page. As a rule of thumb, every day I check to see what is currently trending. The other day it was the hashtag #thedrop. Meaning that people were recreating their own DJ sets and showing how they DJ/create music around their homes during the quarantine. My biggest piece of advice is to create around those trending hashtags. If you continue to do what is popular on the app (and do it well) TikTok will reward you!
TIP THREE: Pick a lane! TikTok is very picky about this! Their algorithm is a lot different than Instagram’s/Facebook’s in that HUMAN EYES will see your content prior to it “going viral.” Meaning that an actual human will review your content prior to them pushing it out for millions to see. Therefor if you see a video with 100k+ views, chances are it was reviewed by their actual team prior to making it to that amount of people. Now… I have read that in this process the team of human eyes will go to your profile and ensure that there is some synergy on your page prior to doing this. They want to push out profiles that when users click to your page they see similar videos. Therefor try and choose what lane you want to create in.. beauty, makeup, fashion, comedy, dancing, lip syncing, etc!
TIP FOUR: Clean up your feed! This was a big suggestion in the TechCrunch article linked above! There are a few reasons for ensuring your feed is cleaned up (meaning that you should really only keep videos live that got above 1k views). The main reason being that generally when TikTok goes to put a video on their FYP, they will be taking a second one from your feed with it. I am not sure why this is, it is just something unique to their algorithm. To ensure the second video is always one that will perform well it helps to not keep a lot of poor performing videos 0 views-300 views in your feed. Those also tend to clutter your feed and can hurt your potential new following from finding your best videos!
TIP FIVE: Don’t Let TikTok Stress You! This app is supposed to be fun and something that will give you a creative release rather than keep you up at night, stressed! It also has incredible growth potential for some. I have seen people gain 30k followers in one month or 18k followers in one day. It is very different than Instagram in that way and can really help you grow on a separate platform. This is the main reason I suggest to a lot of growing influencers to hop on this platform!
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