Bith.tv: How We Went Viral on TikTok in 2022
Although this article is written from a perspective of a brand/company, most of what’s written here can still be applied to individual content creators who think they may have hit a brick wall when it comes to growing their TikTok Channels.
The past three-months have been good to us. As we write this article, our TikTok channel has 76,700 followers, and our [13] videos have been played more than 7 million times, generating 550,000 likes and a few thousand comments, all organically.
Most brands out there aspire to grow their social media presence. In our case, this was never an option, or just an aspiration, as bith.tv’s mere existence revolves around helping other creators increase their content’s discoverability with tools that we build and offer.
Hence, it seemed nonsensical to us to claim that our tools can somehow enhance the quality of other creators’ content and increase their discoverability when we ourselves haven’t proven it yet with our own socials.
This is why it was important for us to amass a social media following, even at the pre-product/market fit stage. The goal wasn’t to attract an influx of potential users down our Pirate Funnel (and suffering from poor retention rates). Instead, our goal was fairly simple and two-folded;
1- Build Trust: by starting a channel that revolves around content creation and social media discoverability, not only do we get to test certain assumptions about the market internally, but we also get to build credibility with potential users along the way. We reckoned this would also help us improve conversion rates and reduce customer acquisition costs down the road.
2- Gather Data: in a region that lacks data, posting videos and polls is a great way to conduct market research, gauge potential users’ interests, and collect invaluable quantitative and qualitative feedback. This, in turn, would help us build better products for our target market: up-and-coming creators.
Initially, we decided to focus on TikTok since the probability of gaining exposure there in a short timeframe is relatively greater than the rest of the platforms (we’ll be exploring this topic in further depth in upcoming articles).
For this article, however, we wanted to share with you some of the most important lessons that we have learned from our growth hacking journey on TikTok so far.
1- Make sure that you understand TikTok’s algorithm
TikTok’s explore-driven algorithm is built on a ‘help me help you’ basis. Unlike the traditional social media days, when trending content would keep gaining more and more exposure, TikTok came and changed the dynamics of the discoverability game.
As a platform, TikTok tends to place more emphasis on boosting underdog creators by constantly seeking to take new creators and transforming them from zeros to heroes in lightning speed.
This is not to say that TikTok will make every single channel famous, as that would impede their growth. You should remember that TikTok, just like any other social media platform out there, is competing for eyeballs against others within the attention economy. That’s why they can’t just continuously boost every single creator, as that will come at the expense of their viewers’ time and expectations.
Instead, TikTok aims to give every creator an equal chance of getting discovered in the beginning, before it becomes a matter of meritocracy. You can think of TikTok as a talent show, where anyone can apply and showcase themselves in front of the judges. Those individuals have one shot at impressing the judges (in hopes of advancing to the next bigger stage).
TikTok is no different. As a new channel, you get your chance by posting a video and TikTok will do its magic by pushing it to a small viewer cluster (usually located within your geographical radius/proximity) to gauge their interest.
This ‘interest’ is examined by various factors, including and not limited to swipe-through rate (which is why your videos need to start with a quick hook), percentage of video watched (which explains why shorter videos perform better from a mathematical probability standpoint), and of course other engagement factors such as number of likes, comments, and shares.
Simply put, your first few videos will be pushed onto certain viewers’ feeds. If the videos do well, TikTok will keep advancing you to the next stage by pushing your content to more and more people.
Essentially, this means that your channel’s success will depend on the first 2–3 videos that you publish. If the first few videos are mediocre and do not gain the nearby sample audience’s approval (who play the role of the judges in the talent show analogy), TikTok’s algorithm will stop boosting your content and your channel will be labeled as a subpar channel that is not worthy enough of other people’s attention.
So make sure those first few videos are great quality and perform well, or else you might have to resort to the next point (#2).
2- You might have to kill your current channel and restart from scratch
Yup, you heard that right. Killing your TikTok channel and restarting from scratch can be the best decision you can ever make to achieve your growth goals.
As mentioned in the previous point, if for some reason you mess up with your first few videos, TikTok’s algorithm will burry your content and the odds of your channel gaining exposure become extremely thin (if any).
At bith.tv, we learned this the hard way.
In April of 2021, we started our TikTok journey for the first time. At the time, we posted our first video (which was a weird and funny video of one of our American users speaking Arabic), which performed well. Within the first 48-hours of publishing it, the video was played around 64,000 times and it gathered a few thousand likes and comments. We had also gotten close to 4,000 new followers.
Then we posted two mediocre videos, and our growth had remained stagnant ever since. It was pretty clear to us by the end of 2021 that no amount of quality content was ever going to overturn this stagnation. We had our chance, and we blew it in the second and third videos that we posted.
Some channels/brands/creators choose to upload a video twice, or even go as far as deleting it and reposting it again (if they feel that the algorithm has not done it justice). This makes sense if your channel has already done well in its first few videos and is not facing any channel-growth challenges.
But if you feel that your channel is not growing on TikTok, then it is the perfect time to consider killing your channel and restarting from scratch. In our case, we had close to 5,000 followers and our videos had been played over a 100,000 times by the end of 2021, yet we still dared to say goodbye (and it has been the best decision we’ve made).
Hell, if you want to grow on TikTok, you better dream big and not settle for okay figures.
3- Put a face to your brand
We cannot stress this one enough.
Unlike brick-and-mortar stores with physical locations (and actual human beings working inside of them), online brands are mostly intangible and only exist within the realms of code lines.
In our case, the face we assigned to our brand was a guy called Omar Majthoub, a 21-year old with a personality so big it can fill a room. We got to know Majthoub when we first started bith.tv, and he has been an integral part of the family ever since.
At the time, Majthoub was posting videos on YouTube so he understood the pain-points extremely well. For a good year and a half, Majthoub helped us improve our product (from a user/creator standpoint), and we helped him with some of his TikTok scripts (funnily enough, he was a die-hard YouTuber so we had to convince him of getting on TikTok).
As soon as Majthoub got on TikTok, and within 48-hours of publishing his first three videos, he had already become a TikTok star. His third video on TikTok alone was played more than 2-million times and had generated thousands of likes and comments within the span of 24-hours.
Earlier this year, Majthoub dropped out of college and decided to join us full-time to handle our social media channels and become the face of our brand. As a result, viewers now are more engaged with us than back in 2021.
This is because they feel a human is trying to connect with them, and not just a brand trying to push promotions down their throats. So if you’re a brand looking to be remembered, trusted, and interacted with by others, remember to assign a face to it and adopt the following point (#4).
4- Shift your content from promotional to educational
Although TikTok’s beginnings as Musical.ly championed (and continues to champion) users creating dance and short lip-sync videos, today’s TikTok is championing a new form of content: educational.
TikTok knows that the largest demographic using their platform is Gen Z, and they understand that there is more to this generation than just dancing; they love to learn and be educated.
In our case, all of the videos we create on TikTok are educational. While all of our videos have bith.tv’s logo in the background right behind Majthoub (the face of our brand), less than 15% of our videos include any mention of bith.tv or the online tools we offer.
Since bith.tv’s focus is to help gamers and creators create better content, our TikTok videos generally start off with “3 ways to…”, “how to…”, “reasons why…”, or just random useful tips.
Here are some of the successful examples that we had (along with the English translation of the titles and their respective engagement metrics):
- Video #1: “Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Enough Views”. To date, this video has been played 1.7 million times and has more than 123K likes and 800 comments.
- Video #2: “How to Create Content in 3 Steps”. To date, this video has been played 1.6 million times and has more than 130K likes and 380 comments.
- Video #3: “Why Buying Fake Followers Will Hurt Your Channel”. To date, this video has been played 965K times and has more than 60K likes and 390 comments.
- Video #4: “Global Statistics and the Growth of the Creator Economy”. To date, this video has been played 570K times and has more than 46K likes and 320 comments.
The best thing about TikTok is that almost any good video can go viral, which is why brands should be definitely looking to utilize TikTok to their advantage.
Just make sure you don’t get too caught up in your short-term moneymaking plans by trying to promote your features/products/services as that will do more harm than good. Instead, focus your content strategy on being a value-creator in order to build the trust and rapport you need to with your potential customers.
Trust the process, and the process will take care of the eventual outcomes we all aspire for: better conversions through our funnels.
What is bith.tv again?
In a region that is comprised of more than 100 million individuals under the age of 30, and at a time where more individuals are seeking to become creators to educate and entertain others through gaming and other forms of content, bith.tv aims to simplify the entire content creation journey for MENA Creators by providing them with easy-to-use video editing and social media distribution tools. We know what it takes to generate top-notch content and generate the exposure needed from scratch, so our goal is to increase the percentage of Arabic content online by empowering the next generation of Arabic-native Creators.
