How to Use TikTok to YOUR Advantage
What is TikTok and does it work? Here are some actionable stragtegies to gain a following and monetize it on TikTok.
You, your kids, or someone you know is probably obsessed with TikTok; and if you haven’t heard of Charli D’Amelio, Addison Rae, Loren Gray and or Zach King, they have tens of millions of follower that they’ve gained in only around 1 year. TikTok isn’t Musical.ly and it’s not just for young kids anymore. Although the highest concentration of it’s viewers lies between the single digits to people in their young thirties, there are many people over 50 using it too. You can gain followers fast and make tons of money, it’s pretty simple… want to know how?
TikTok’s algorithm focuses on a few main things: watch time, engagement, consistency, and niche一basically if your video performs well it will be recommended to more people and so on.
- Watch Time- videos that are watched all the way through or multiple times helps TikTok know that the video is good enough to go semi or fully viral.
- Engagement- likes, comments, and shares (the more the better).
- Consistency- posting at least once a day but 2–3 times ideally.
- Niche- people tend to be interested in a certain type of content and will be more likely to follow you if all of your videos stick to one or two main themes. Always choose something you can do long-term.
TikTok is all about trends, lucky for you spending lots of time coming up with new innovative video ideas isn’t necessarily what TikTok’s viewers want to see. Pay attention to what other successful creators are putting out and make a similar video一if it’s in your niche of course. Jumping on trends as soon as possible and using hashtags helps a lot too. #foryoupage, #fyp, #trending, and #viral are some of the most used hashtags. Using a few of those and some less popular tags related to the content of your video will help more people find your video resulting in more views! To help boost the performance of your TikTok, keep the length of your videos around or under 15 seconds because TikTok users do not have long attention spans. Also, ask questions in your caption to help engage your audience. Selecting a good cover for your video will also increase the amount of clicks you recieve. Your first 5–10 videos shouldn’t just be trial runs. Why? TikTok will rate your account on how those first few videos performed. Your rating can go down or up, but it’s a lot harder to revive your “score” than to hit the ground running.
How do you know if your content is good?
Upgrading to a TikTok Pro account is free and simple. By adjusting your account in settings, you will now be able to see the demographic of your viewers, what times of day are they most active, and how long they are watching your content. This is helpful to know because you can learn what type of content is most successful and when to post it to maximize its reach. If you’re making great videos and helping your videos perform to their BEST ability, the TikTok algorithm will do the rest.
How Does TikTok Choose For You Page Content?
The application will put your video into an experiment. First, your video will be shown to your followers in their follow tab and a small group of others, if they like it then it will be pushed out to more people一about 500 depending on how it performed. Eventually if the video is consistently doing well, it will continue to level up and go viral. But if performance starts to slow, your video will stop being recommended. VERY IMPORTANTLY, before your video can get on the viral “For You” page it has to be reviewed by a TikTok employee; so make sure it’s appropriate or it will stop gaining traction.
Making Money from TikTok
Ok, great… Now that we have all that figured out, this is how YOU can use TikTok to make MONEY.
- Live Streams- Once you reach 1,000 followers you can go live and accept donations.
- Sponsorships- brands will pay you to promote their products
- Time Bucks- a website that will pay you to use a certain song and promote it in your TikToks
- Launching a Career or Business on Other Monetized Platforms- once you have a lot of followers, some of them may also want to follow you on Youtube or Instagram, for example. Linking these profiles in your bio will help them grow easily. Having supporters across multiple platforms will help you achieve long-term success. Selling merchandise is another great way to generate revenue.
Be Careful When It Comes to Making Money Off of Your Supporters.
Don’t give your fans a reason to lose trust in you, or have them think that you are just in it for the money. Raking in quick cash isn’t always the best idea long-term. If your followers don’t feel a real connection with you they will lose interest and so will paying brands too.
