Whether you’re a consumer brand looking to make a splash, or a content creator who wants to be the next big thing, TikTok is a great place for sharing video to a wide audience. The platform gives creators a good selection of video formats to play with, including standard clips of anywhere between 15 seconds and 30 minutes in length, 15 second Stories which disappear after 24 hours, or live streams of up to an hour.
On top of this, there are plenty of tools you can use to customize your videos, along with a huge library of music and sound effects - it’s truly a creative playground. Effective social media management can help you make the most of these features, ensuring your content reaches the right audience at the right time. And if you’ve got strong content, it’s one of the best social media platforms for building a large audience.
But one of the biggest struggles people encounter when they first start using the channel is how they can get more TikTok followers, and it can be pretty demotivating when they work hard to create great content that just doesn’t seem to generate the volume of views or engagement they hoped for. So in this post, we’ve listed 37 ideas to help all TikTok users grow their audience:
1. Find a Good Niche
What’s the overall theme or topic of your TikTok account? If you’re posting about everything and nothing, it’s going to be hard to attract a regular audience, because people want to follow accounts that have content focused on something they’re interested in.
Most of us are unlikely to build a big following purely through sheer force of personality alone - so whether it’s comedy or cooking, fashion or fishing, you need to pick an area to focus your content on so you can draw in an audience that is interested in that topic.
2. Understand Your Audience
Who are the people that already follow you, or who follow other creators within your niche? Learn as much as you can about them, what kind of people they are, and what they’re interested in. The more you know about the audience you’re trying to reach, the more ammunition you’ll have to create content that resonates with them.
3. Optimize Your Bio
People will follow you on TikTok because of your content, but your bio will help snare those viewers who perhaps liked a video they saw and came to find out more about you. Keep it simple, let them know exactly who you are and what they can expect from you. If your bio is confusing or uninteresting, you could lose potential followers.
4. Be The Audience
To get followers on TikTok you really need to understand how the platform and its culture works, and the best way to do that is to be a follower yourself instead of just posting and ignoring everybody else. Follow other people within your niche, engage with them, participate in the community and get a feel for it so you can see how the experience feels from the perspective of the followers you’re trying to reach - this will put you in a much stronger position to make your own account succeed.
5. Stay On-Topic
The TikTok algorithm needs a little time to figure out what your account is all about, so it can show your content to the people who are most likely to be interested in it. For this reason, it’s important to make sure your content stays relevant to the topic you have chosen, especially when your account is still relatively new. Once you have posted a lot of content and have a few thousand followers, it might be safe to stray off-topic occasionally, but if you want to build an audience it’s best to stay on target as much as possible.
6. Lighting and Camera Stabilization
We’re going to assume you already know that having good quality content is essential, but don’t forget the importance of production values. Your video needs to look as good as possible, and you don’t even need a high end camera because most modern smartphones are capable of shooting great video, but there are other things to consider. The two most important things to fix are lighting and stabilization.
Make sure your videos are filmed where there is plenty of natural light so people can see you, or invest in some affordable lighting; there are plenty of online tutorials about how to light a video well. Stabilization is even easier. To begin with you can just make sure your phone or camera is propped up on any convenient stable surface, but it’s a good idea to buy a tripod which will make this much simpler.
7. Get Seen, Go Viral, Get More TikTok Followers
Ultimately, the best way to get more TikTok followers is for your videos to be seen by as many people as possible. Your content won’t be for everybody, but the more visibility you have, the more opportunities there will be for it to be seen by people who like it and want to follow you to get more. So, while your overall goal should always be to create good content for the audience you want to reach, it doesn’t hurt to think about how you can make videos that might go viral.
8. Adapt Trends to Your Niche
A good way to help increase the viral potential of your videos is to keep an eye on trending themes and formats. It seems as though every week there’s a new craze spreading across the platform, so if you’re sharp and you can think of ways to adapt a trend to your topic, you improve your odds of the video going viral. The key is to be quick on your feet - it’s no good jumping on a trend that’s already had its moment, you need to be able to produce a relevant video while people are still obsessing over the trend.
9. Use Subtitles/Closed Captions
A lot of people watch TikTok videos without sound, often because they’re in a situation where they are unable to listen to the audio. Also, some of your audience may have hearing problems. Whenever your videos feature you or somebody else speaking, be sure to include closed captions so that people can still enjoy the content - this will open up your videos to a much wider audience. You can use TikTok’s auto-caption feature, or a third party tool to add captions in your preferred style.
10. Write Strong Video Descriptions
TikTok gives you up to 2200 characters to write a description of each video - but that doesn’t mean you should use them all! People aren’t on TikTok to read essays, so keep your descriptions punchy and to the point, but be sure to include all of the relevant information about the content of the video, including important keywords that people may be searching for in relation to your content.
11. Show Your Personality, and Your Face
You don’t need to show your face or even use your own voice on videos, and plenty of successful accounts don’t do either. But, if you’re struggling to get TikTok followers, and the kind of content you create could work in that way, showing your face is a great way to add some personality to your videos. This can help grow your follower count because people often find it more relatable when they can see the person who created the video, and that helps them to develop more of an interest in you.
12. Use Hooks to Catch Followers
The first three seconds of your videos are incredibly important for “hooking” your audience’s attention, so you need to open with a phrase or idea that will draw people in, some common examples are:
- You’re not going to believe this, but…
- Why is nobody talking about….
- Most people don’t know…
The best kind of hooks not only draw people in, but provide a strong incentive for them to watch your video all the way to the end. Here are some ideas:
- 5 tips on how to get more TikTok followers - number 5 is unbeatable!
- Start with the end - show a surprising or shocking ending to your content, and then show people how it happened.
- Do a challenge which will have either an impressive result or an epic fail at the end.
- Ranking or listing - take something your followers are interested in and make a ranking video, because they’ll always want to know what your best/worst choice is.
13. Look for Inspiration
Plagiarism is bad, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with looking at the content themes and formats that are working for successful TikTokers, and taking a little inspiration from them. They almost certainly borrowed ideas from other creators when they got started, and you can do the same - find ideas that work and adapt them for your own content.
14. Create Enticing Thumbnails
When you post a video TikTok will automatically generate a thumbnail for you, but it’s better to add a custom thumbnail that you’ve created yourself. There are lots of online guides to creating great TikTok thumbnails that will encourage people to watch your videos and help you snare more followers, but the key thing is to make the image look as interesting and engaging as possible, and use a little text to describe your hook, so people will be drawn in.
15. Engage With Similar Accounts
Commenting on and interacting with accounts in a similar topic to you will help establish your account as a participant in that niche area, making it easier for people who share that interest to find and follow you. It’s also a good way to network with influential creators who share the same interests as you.
16. Partner With Creators and Influencers
Working with other creators who have similar interests to you is a great way to get more TikTok followers. By collaborating on content together, you can become more visible to each other’s audiences and gain new fans.
17. Comment on Trending Videos
People often discover new accounts to follow when they’re reading the comments under a video they’ve just watched. If you consistently add good comments to popular videos, you’ll increase your chances of being noticed and earning a few new followers.
18. Engage With Your Audience
Think like a community manager! If people take the time to comment on your videos, show your appreciation by replying to them as much as possible, and create video replies if you can. This will help you to build a stronger relationship with the followers you already have, and in turn they are more likely to recommend you to others.
19. Use Hashtags
Using a smart combination of TikTok hashtags on each of your videos will help ensure your content gets seen by the people who are most interested and who will more probably follow you. Use popular hashtags that broadly describe the overall topic your account covers, as well as more niche, focused hashtags that highlight the specific topics covered in each video. This way you get a good balance of high-volume and specificity.
20. Post Every Day
Posting content consistently and regularly will help your account to perform well and TikTok recommends that you post 3 to 5 times a week. But if you’re serious about gaining more followers on TikTok you should probably consider posting once a day at minimum.
Every video you post gives you another opportunity to reach a wider audience, but don’t lose focus on quality - everything you post should be something you’re proud of creating.
21. Experiment With Video Length
You can record TikTok videos of anywhere between 15 seconds and 30 minutes, although some countries don’t yet have access to the full 30 minutes and are still limited to shorter times. In any case, try to experiment with different video lengths to see what works best for your style of content.
You may find your audience responds better to shorter videos, or that they value the additional information you provide in a longer recording, or you might learn that it doesn’t make any difference. But you won’t know until you try different lengths.
22. Post at Optimal Times
The time you post videos can make a lot of difference to the level of engagement and how many new TikTok followers they earn you. Ultimately, the most productive times to post are going to be different depending on your region, your topic, and your audience, so this is another thing that you will need to experiment with to figure out what works best for you. But you can read our guide to the best time to post on TikTok to get some useful tips.
23. Use Trending Music and Sounds
When adding sounds and music to your videos, it can pay to use ones which are currently trending on TikTok, as there’s some speculation that this will help your content to get some extra help from the algorithm. You can find out what’s trending by exploring the TikTok sounds library and looking for the ones which have been used most often, or by searching for keywords such as “viral” or “trending”.
24. Use TikTok LIVE
As well as pre-recording videos, you can also go live on TikTok, streaming to your audience in real time for up to 60 minutes. Not only does this give you an additional tool for driving engagement and loyalty with your existing followers, there’s a lot of speculation that the algorithm gives live streams a boost, potentially exposing your account to a much wider pool of potential new followers. You can also co-host live streams with other TikTok users, so this offers great potential for collaborating with other creators in your niche.
25. Create Exclusivity with Stories
TikTok Stories are video clips that are automatically deleted after 24 hours, compared to regular posts which stay on your account for as long as you like. Because of this, Stories are more likely to be seen only by existing followers and missed by people who do not follow you but sometimes watch your content. You can use this to your advantage by mentioning Stories in your regular content - talk about the great stuff featured in those videos, and your plans to create more, and highlight that people will miss out on your future Stories if they don’t follow you.
26. Create Multi-Part Series
Consider creating episodic content that is spread over multiple videos, and posting the different “parts” over the course of a few days or even weeks. If it’s really strong content, people won’t want to miss the next episodes, and they’ll need to follow you to be sure they know when you’ve published it.
27. Be Analytical
Pay close attention to your account’s analytics, and the engagement metrics for all of your content. If you get deep into the numbers, you’ll be better equipped to understand what’s working - what formats work best, what the ideal time to post is, whether video length makes a difference, and much more. By taking a scientific approach to understanding your account performance, you’ll soon develop a stronger understanding of what you need to do to grow your audience.
28. Jump on Trending Challenges
Viral challenges are a big part of TikTok culture, and new ones appear almost every week. We’re not saying you should jump on every challenge, but if there’s a fun way to make it relevant to the kind of content you produce, this can be a great way of getting in on a trending topic and reaching a wider audience.
29. Share Outside TikTok
Believe it or not, a lot of people are not on TikTok, yet. Be sure to share your content on other social platforms, at least occasionally, so people can see what they’re missing. Not everybody will be converted, but if they like what they see, there’s a reasonable chance that some people will be tempted to join TikTok so they can find more of your content.
30. Build a Content Plan
If you’re serious about getting more TikTok followers, you need to think like a professional content creator. Build out a content plan on a calendar, so you have a roadmap of content you need to produce and a schedule for how you’re going to make it all. This is a great way to stay disciplined and on track, because you’ll be giving yourself deadlines to make sure your content pipeline is always full. You’ll also be able to tell when you need to brainstorm new ideas so you can continue to post regularly.
31. Use TikTok Promote
TikTok Promote is a paid social feature that helps content creators to boost their content to a wider audience. Obviously this is budget dependent, so it’s not for everybody, but if you’re a brand or a heavyweight influencer, you might want to consider investing to make sure your best content gets showcased and stands a stronger chance of success.
32. Duet on Popular Videos
A Duet is a TikTok feature which allows you to record a video which plays alongside a video published by another creator - if they have allowed their video to be used in Duets. It’s a popular and widely used feature. If you can come up with a fun and engaging way to Duet with a popular video, this can be a great way of reaching a much wider audience and gaining some new followers - especially if the creator of the original video likes your Duet and reposts it to their own audience.
33. Stitch Popular Videos
Similar to Duet, a Stitch is a TikTok feature that allows you to embed another creator’s video (or just a part of it) as a segment into your own. Again, this can be a great way to reach a wider audience if you find some interesting way to build on or add value to the original video. If the original video’s creator shares or responds to your Stitch, this will increase your visibility to potential new followers on TikTok.
34. Use TikTok Studio
TikTok Studio is a suite of tools from TikTok designed to help creators work more efficiently within the platform, both for creating content and engaging with their audience, it’s available as a smartphone app and on the web. By using Studio you’ll get better at working with TikTok, creating great content, and building your audience.
35. Don’t Delete Unsuccessful Content
Some people think if a video doesn’t get a lot of attention after a day or two, they should delete it so that it doesn’t make their timeline look sad. This is counterproductive - you’ve put a lot of effort into creating content, and just because it isn’t immediately successful, that doesn’t mean you should write it off.
As you’re building your account it’s going to take time to earn an audience, and once people do start to discover your content there’s a good chance they’ll want to see all of the earlier videos you published. Often videos can go viral a long time after they were originally posted, so as long as you’re happy with the content you’ve created, leave it online for your future fans to enjoy.
36. Encourage Engagement
If your videos get lots of engagement from your audience, the TikTok algorithm will take that as a signal to show your content to more people, which leads to more followers. So don’t be afraid to ask for engagement - ask your audience to share their opinions about your topic in the comments, think of conversation starters you can include in your videos, and remind viewers that they’re really helping you out by liking and sharing your content.
37. Follow Up on Viral Videos FAST
When your effort pays off and one of your videos is a viral hit, you need to capitalize on your success. For a short period, a lot of people will be paying attention to your account, so this is an opportunity to convert them to new followers. Reply to comments with video-comments, consider doing a live stream, and follow up with new videos in the days immediately after you go viral - but always try to keep your quality high.
Meltwater’s social media management solution helps brands manage their social channels at scale, including TikTok. To find out more, get in touch for a demonstration.
