How I Grew my TikTok from ZERO to 1.1K Followers in 7 days
And surprisingly got paid for 1 viral video.
Warning: This article is NOT written by ChatGPT. I will be covering what I did to grow my personal TikTok page (@darientan.ai) from 0 followers to 1.1K followers in 7 days. Verify it for yourself if in doubt.
TikTok follower count:
Day 1/7 (15 March 2023) – 0 followers
Day 7/7 (21 March 2023) – 1.1K followers, 23.1K Likes & 395.8K Views
A little about me — I’m here to share everything I know that works on TikTok
Hey! Darien here. A proud husband and entrepreneur who has been able to build multiple startups from the ground up through the power of social media.
Throughout the past 2 years, I have had the privilege of being recognized as a thought leader in social media marketing (in particularly, live commerce) and was invited to speak at the largest Social Commerce conference in Southeast Asia. Recently, I was also invited as a guest speaker for the discussion on “The Rise of Social Commerce” with Meta & Shopline.
There are a lot of fake gurus out there sharing their so-called expertise on social media, and unfortunately, most of them are full of it.
I prove my worth through my hard work and accomplishments and the purpose of me writing this article is to share with you how I was able to grow my TikTok account from 0 to 1K+ followers within 7 days — with $0!
If I can do it on a completely new TikTok account, you can too.
However, before you jump into TikTok, please understand that growing your account takes effort and execution.
To put it simply:
- Poor knowledge → Poor execution → Poor results
- Excellent knowledge → Excellent execution → Excellent results
In this article, I will be sharing everything I know about growing your TikTok account, based on my first-hand experience. I want you to learn from my process and make them work for you.
So, if you’re ready to harness the power of TikTok and start growing your brand, let’s get started from Day 1 out of 7!
Some things cannot be taught; they must be experienced. You never learn the most valuable lessons in life until you go through your own journey.
- Roy T. Bennett
Here’s the challenge: Grow from 0 to 1,000 followers on TikTok in 7 Days.
Day 1/7 (15 March 2023)
1. Defining My Personal Brand
As I was using my personal TikTok account with the intention of productising myself, I had to first define a personal brand.
This led me on the journey of self-exploration in order to distill my overall life philosophy. This way, I could create a comprehensive and robust brand that reflects all aspects of my personality.
Are you at a crossroads in your life and looking to discover yourself while also building a personal brand? If so, then you’ll definitely want to check out my three-part article series where I share in detail about my extremely personal journey of self-discovery:
- The Freedom Formula: How Your Philosophy Towards Wealth, Health, Relationships, and Happiness Can Set You Free
- The Influence Matrix: A Solution to First-World Rat Race Misery
- Unstoppable by Design: How to Build a Business while Working a 9–5
As I worked through this journey of introspection, I emerged with clarity on my personal brand, which is this: I’m on the mission to help others achieve contentment in the key areas of wealth, health, relationships, and happiness. I’m here to debunk the myth that you can’t have it all, and to show you that you can have your cake and eat it too.
With this clear vision of the value I strive to provide to the world, I was ready to define my content niche.
2. Defining My Content Niche
I’ve decided to leverage my expertise in tech and focus on creating TikTok videos on sales and software. These two niches also aligns with the significantly higher affiliate commission rates, should I decide to take up affiliate brand deals in the future.
By creating content in these two niches, I’m able to appeal to a wide range of audiences while also building a personal brand that is versatile and adaptable. This allows me to explore other niches as I continue to grow and evolve as a content creator and human being.
3. Defining TikTok as Part of an Overall Content Strategy
TikTok can never work alone. TikTok’s strength is in reaching the broadest audience organically and building brand equity. However, it lacks in conversion capabilities compared to other platforms like Instagram.
Thus, TikTok needs to be a part of an overall content strategy in order to nurture audiences from discovering you to trusting you.
This is how I constructed my content lead funnel, from the top to bottom:
- TikTok (Objective: Reach as many people as possible to build brand awareness and direct them to Instagram)
- Instagram (Objective: Direct followers to Medium to read articles and/or subscribe to my newsletter)
- Medium (Objective: Build trust with followers through thought-provoking articles and direct them to subscribe to my newsletter)
- Email List (Objective: Provide exclusive content to the most avid followers who’re subscribed to my newsletter)
You see what I did there? ;) Go ahead and subscribe for my newsletter already if you haven’t. I promise you’ll find a lot of value there. My goal is to help anyone with big dreams to dream even bigger, and high achievers to achieve even more through practical & high-value skillsets.
Day 2/7 (16 March 2023)
With a clear idea of my personal brand, content niche and how TikTok fits in my overall content strategy, I was ready to create & post my first ever video.
Here’s the important part: I wanted the first video to go VIRAL.
The best way to do so is to see what is working from my FYP (For You Page), and saving them in a list for reference as follows:
This provided me broad context into the types of videos that are popular at that point in time. Immediately, I noticed these two most important trends (please take note of this if you’re serious about growing your TikTok account):
- For content: It doesn’t matter whether the video is well produced or not; how UNIQUE the content is, is of greater importance.
- For virality: “Like” and “Save” are key metrics to optimize our TikTok videos for. How-To videos are great because it gives viewers a reason to “Like” and/or “Save” it for future reference
With that, I decided to produce an instructional How-To video on using ChatGPT via API calls, with TypingMind’s interface.
I didn’t even bother to edit the video outside of TikTok. I edited it with TikTok’s editor (it is really the only thing you need), posted it, and then went to sleep.
Here’s the link to the first TikTok video I posted.
Day 3/7 (17 March 2023)
The next morning, I woke up, went into TikTok, and my jaw dropped.
At 8:22AM: I had gotten 46.1K Views, 121 Followers, 2558 Likes!
At 10:19AM: The video grossed 84.6K Views, 5140 Likes, 241 Followers!
At 11:59AM: I was at 111.6K Views, 7025 Likes, 339 Followers!
Day 4/7 (18 March 2023)
I crossed the 100K views mark with the first video. I knew that I was on to something and wanted to test out another format of How-To content.
At 3:37 PM on Day 4/7, I posted my second TikTok video. The second video was also a how-to instructional video, but it was recorded directly from my computer screen (as opposed to from my iPhone like in the first video) as a way to test out a different format of video.
At this point, the first video had already hit 160.6K Views, over 10K Likes and 492 followers.
Day 5/7 (19 March 2023)
On Day 5, I posted my third TikTok video in the morning.
This video followed a similar style to my first TikTok video, since it was doing significantly better than my second post, I decided to follow that style.
A/B test when unsure and use data over instincts to inform your decisions.
Facts don’t care about your feelings.
This was the status at 11:25PM on Day 5/7:
- The third TikTok post had more than 10K views by evening time!
- The second TikTok only had about 3K views.
- The first TikTok video was going WILD with >300K Views.
If you noticed, my Follower & Likes count had also more than doubled from the previous day, ending the day with just over 1K followers and 21.3K Likes across all videos.
Not bad at all!
Day 6/7 (20 March 2023)
Here’s how my profile was looking at 10:12AM on Day 6/7:
I didn’t make any post on this day at all, but was rather focused on replying to all the comments across the videos to keep up with the engagement with my followers.
Here’s the thing: If your videos ever get viral (which I sincerely hope they do!), you will have to deal with haters, like I did.
Pro Tip: Keep the haters engaged by replying to them, and take their comment with a pinch of salt. Ultimately, if your content is going viral, it means that it is valuable.
You are adding value to the world, while haters are detracting from it.
The rule of the game on TikTok is simple — As long as people are Commenting, Liking and Saving your video, TikTok’s algorithm will favour your content and push it out to more people!
Let the haters comments feed the TikTok algorithm and try not to let the hate get to you.
Hatred is like drinking poison and then waiting for it to kill your enemy.
- Nelson Mandela
Day 7/7 (21 March 2023)
I had a little fun and posted a video of myself making a latte.
Unsurprisingly, this video fell flat because it didn’t fulfil the fundamental criteria of UNIQUENESS as covered above.
Basically, nobody gave a shit about my barista skills :(. And I don’t blame them. There’s simply an over-saturation of such content, especially since I’m not a great barista to begin with.
Point taken? You. Need. To. Make. UNIQUE. Content.
Here’s where I was at at the end of Day 7/7 (21 March 2023):
Mission accomplished! 🚀🚀🚀
One final note
Don’t lose out on networking opportunities along the way as you build your TikTok page. I’ve managed to build amazing networks just by proving that I’m credible by doing first before even asking for anything in return.
Here’s me reaching out to Tony Dinh, the creator of TypingMind.com (basically the product that I showcased in my first TikTok video that had gone viral)
Connection made, reputation built, repeat!
Relationships are everything. Credibility is everything. Nobody wants to do business with people who are full of it.
LATEST UPDATE: Tony, creator of TypingMind, reaching out to pay me (without me asking)
This is the first time ever that someone hunted me down to hand me money! What a dream.
It goes to show that it’s not about asking for payment, but creating value first.
Look! New collaboration opportunities coming in.
What initially started off as a 7 day experiment has now kick started my journey as a TikTok technology creator. How awesome is that!
If I could do it, so can you. Go and make magic happen today!
If this article has inspired or helped you in any way, feel free to follow me for more of such actionable content.
Your support, no matter how small, goes a long way in helping me further my mission of helping others achieve contentment in the key areas of wealth, health, relationships, and happiness.
About Me:
Hi! I’m Darien — a proud husband and digital entrepreneur from Singapore.
One of the main themes you’ll find in my work is philosophy on health, wealth, relationships, and happiness.
I firmly believe that these four pillars of life are interconnected and that we cannot have one without the others. I also believe that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to achieving success in these areas. Instead, we need to find our own unique paths and embrace our individuality.
My goal is to challenge you to think critically about your own beliefs and values so that you can live a life that you truly love. If you’re ready to start living life on your own terms, then you’re at the right place.
