9 Tips and Tricks to Grow Your Audience on TikTok
Unless you live in the deepest and darkest jungle without Wi-Fi, TikTok needs no introduction.
With exploding growth since its inception in 2016, the newest member of the social media family is far more than being a new kid in the block – it’s a digital revolution in itself.
Though earlier it was a platform deemed suitable for the Gen-Z crowd, it’s rapidly changing. And marketers are taking keen notice of it.
If your businesses are left behind on this platform and are clueless about how to grow your audience on TikTok without blasting your advertising budget, you’ve come to the right place.
With the number of first-time TikTok downloads reaching 315 million and a global user spending of $50.4 million in 2021, any brand can go viral and grow on this platform within no time.
Let us show you how to do it!
9 Tips and Tricks to Grow your Audience on TikTok
To grow TikTok followers, use these nine actionable strategies and see your brand reach another level.
- It’s all about numbers.
To grow a strong audience on TikTok, post often and post regularly. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, the more you post on this viral video app, the higher your chances of getting viral and noticed by potential viewers. Posting between one to three posts a day may work in your favor.
Though it may sound a lot, that’s the number game with this social media platform. If you’re serious about growing your following and want to leave a lasting impression, you have to deliver high-quality content based on your target audience preference.
Interestingly, consistency in posting videos is equally important. Why?
There is no point in posting three videos in one day and not posting anything for the next three days. Such strategies and inconsistencies don’t seem to work. You need a lot of exciting video content to kick start a campaign that eventually delivers exceptional results.
- Follow the latest TikTok trends
As this platform is built for trends going viral, increase your audience by hopping on new trends. From funny challenges to dance videos, something is always trending.
When you participate in these latest trends, you go with the popularity flow, and your target audience easily finds your videos. Trends and challenges help your brand jump into the latest conversations and earn some extra visibility. If you’re lucky, your video may get viral in no time and can garner thousands of followers.
However, if you decide to follow these trends, create out-of-the-box creative videos that set your content apart from others.
You can even check out the latest trending songs and create content around it. When a user finds a song they like, they usually prefer seeing other TikTok videos of the same song.
- Keep your videos short
While the platform allows you to upload videos as long as 60 seconds, keeping them short and between 8 to 15 seconds can help your business gain followers. Why?
According to research, people tend to lose interest in what they’re watching after eight seconds if your content or video is not sufficiently diverting. With 19% of online viewers defecting in the first 10 seconds, it makes sense to keep your videos short yet creative.
So, when creating videos, start strong with a burst of action or movement to hook your viewers.
Creating long videos may prove useless because your viewers are likely to skip or skim through your video content.
Interestingly, TikTok’s algorithm increases your brand reach if viewers are watching your videos until the end!
So, capitalize on it!
- Optimize content for the ‘For You Page.’
For accelerated growth on this platform, get featured on For You Page (FYP). On TikTok, the app’s homepage houses countless feeds of algorithmically curated content tailored based on a viewer’s interest.
Interestingly, any video can get featured on FYP regardless of the number of followers.
So, it makes sense to optimize your content for the algorithms to recognize and promote it to more than 800 million active monthly users. You can achieve content optimization using the following methods:
- Using trending hashtags
- Posting consistently and at optimal times
- Prioritizing short videos
By nailing these three aspects, the sky can become the limit for your TikTok growth.
- Collaborate with influencers
There is no point in being a one-person army when you’re just starting because people might get bored seeing the same face again and again. Recording a duo or using help from a TikTok influencer can positively impact your audience and help grow a loyal fanbase on one of the most explosive social media platforms.
However, choose the right influencer because someone with extremely large followers is less likely to collaborate with your brand, especially if you have fewer followers. So, select an appropriate influencer in your niche and collaborate with them frequently to connect with a wider audience base.
- Engage with other TikTokers
Leaving comments on other’s videos encourages them to return your comments and shares.
Believe it or not, this concept is backed up by science and popularly called the law of reciprocity. According to this law, when person X does something nice to another person Y, Y feels the urge to return their favor. In this case, other users can return your favor by commenting or sharing your videos with their followers.
Videos that get more comments and shares rank higher on TikTok, increasing your chances of featuring in FYP.
- Use video editing apps.
Regardless of how short your videos are, you can always improve their quality by using video editing apps. To edit TikTok videos, you don’t require a professional video editing app; editing with a free app can produce extraordinary results.
Basically, through video editing, focus on using eye-catching filters and effects to make videos that captivate your follower’s interest. Tools like UNUM enable you to remove unwanted parts of your video and provide a rich visual effects library.
Interestingly, if you want to create a ghost effect in your video clip, tools like MuStar or Triller come in handy.
These third-party video editing tools offer much more than what TikTok’s in-built video editing features provide.
For brands looking to taste success on this platform, using a video editing app could be the difference between failure and success.
- Punch up your videos
While it may be tempting to repurpose the existing videos that you uploaded on YouTube or other social media platforms, refrain from using them, at least for your TikTok audience.
Why?
Unlike YouTube or Facebook, your TikTok videos need to be way above exciting and engaging. Essentially, your videos require a punch-up to attract and captivate the interest of your followers. To punch up your videos and ensure your followers wait to see your new video, focus on these aspects:
- Time is the essence, so get straight to your point
- Be humorous, informal, and candid because, for professional videos, you have YouTube
- Add trending music for more visibility and engagement
- Use trending hashtags from TikTok’s Discover Page.
The game here is simple: the punchier and captivating videos you create, the higher your growth will be on this platform.
- Focus on using consistent branding
Today, the red and white color in a logo has become synonymous with Coca-Cola because the company consistently uses the same color in all its marketing strategies and communications.
That’s the power of consistent branding, which every brand should strive to achieve.
Using the same fonts, colors, and filters, your audience quickly gets used to your style and can recollect your brand. Consistent branding advocates brand recall and brand awareness – two pillars required for success on any social media platform.
Without consistent branding, your followers will likely forget you or confuse you with other content creators. If you ensure consistency and share high-quality captivating videos, featuring in FYP of a user who isn’t your follower increases manifold.
Additionally, bringing a culture of consistency in your videos makes content creation a breeze for your business as you no longer have to rethink patterns and designs to use.
Using TikTok for Exploding Growth
With youngsters who can’t seem to get enough of TikTok, there is no way a business can hack TikTok’s algorithm to understand the best way to accelerate growth.
But by using these nine tips and creating content in line with your follower’s expectations and requirements can change your business’s fate.
With an average user spending approximately 89 minutes daily on TikTok, your brand has excellent chances to tell its story and generates quality leads.
So, using your creativity and knowledge, this platform can become a perfect spot for your business glow. While this platform is relatively simple to use compared to other platforms’ complex nature, it still requires a well-planned strategy.
To put everything in a nutshell, TikTok provides enormous potential for businesses to grow overnight.
So, are you ready to explore it? Which of these nine tips and tricks are you planning to use to grow your audience on TikTok?
Share your thoughts with us by commenting below.
Author’s Bio
Priya Jain is a professional copywriter with 8 years of experience. She has an MBA and engineering degree. When she is not writing, you will find her teaching math, spending her day running behind her toddler, and trying new recipes. You can follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter.