Going Viral On TikTok: Key Tips

As with any social media tool, there are a variety of different ways to try and game the system on TikTok. Here we look at some of the most reliable techniques for getting your content to bubble to the surface on the rapidly growing platform.

Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Like with most platforms, there are a number of different approaches to grow an audience on TikTok, but there are some viral tips that seem to generally work. Here’s an excerpt from the latest third edition of my Social Media Promotion For Musicians book (special introductory price on the ebook of just $1.99) that outlines some of the things that you can do.

• Like on other video-based platforms, use good lighting when creating a video, and make sure the quality is as good as you can make it.
• Shoot your video to be perfectly in synch with the sound you choose (in other words, make sure that your lip synching and movements are exactly in time with the sound).
• Post new videos 1 to 2 times a day.
• Put your own twist on it. It’s okay if you don’t copy what others are doing exactly.
• Look through the For You page to see what dances, jokes, and sounds are trending. Save sounds and Like the videos that you may want to use or reference later.
• Find something that’s trending and practice doing it yourself. Make it as perfect as you can get it because even if they don’t look like it, the best TikTok videos are the ones that are carefully planned out before shooting.
• Create a video that has a big build up, but before the video hits the climax ask the viewers to follow you to find what happens next.
• Do duets with popular videos. Duets is a feature that allows you to take video that you find and then shoot yourself in a split screen with that video. Your new video then has you appearing on the left half of the screen while the original appears on the right.
• Use hashtags relevant to your content by doing a search on the platform for ones that you think might work. A great thing about TikTok is that it displays the number of videos and total views that each hashtag gets so it’s easy to spot audiences and trends.
• Shoot a video with your own audience and then get others to use your audio. The cool thing for artists and musicians is video that’s shot with original audio is then available to everyone. Remember that your audio doesn’t just have to be music, it can be audio of any kind.
• Most of all, have fun. TikTok doesn’t have the toxic comments of other platforms (at least not yet). It’s meant to be light, casual and care-free.

Believe it or not, TikTok has over a billion users and was downloaded more than even Instagram last year. That means that the possibility of your video being seen by a lot of people, or even blowing up in some small way, is pretty good if you use these viral tips. That said, if your video isn’t getting more than 100 views in the first hour, it’s probably not going to grow any more, so be prepared to keep experimenting until you find something that works.