These days it seems like just about anyone can go viral, with random TikTok videos turning average people into overnight celebrities every other week. While many of these creators who achieve viral fame seem to fall backwards into success, others are more calculated, taking advantage of trends and marketing techniques to generate six or even seven figure sums from their short-form videos. Obviously, there’s no one guaranteed method for going viral, and there’s no direct recipe for success on the TikTok platform, but there are a few simple things we can learn by studying industry trends. After all, TikTok maintains an estimated one billion daily active users globally, meaning there’s almost certainly a market for any kind of content you’d like to produce.
So, you might wonder how to go viral on TikTok without purchasing expensive ad space and buying bot followers to juice your numbers. The short answer is to get a firm grasp of the video sharing app’s digital ecosystem and tap in to a market of potential fans who share a deep passion for your niche. The longer answer can be found in the following write-up, that should offer you the basic tools for viral success. If you’re ready to elevate your TikTok output and become the viral sensation you were always born to be, be sure to read ahead. Feel free to bookmark this page and use it as a resource while you embark upon this exciting journey as well, since navigating the app can be highly difficult.
Make Your First Post Wisely
The first trick on how to go viral on TikTok is one of planning and preparing. One of the key reasons that going viral on TikTok seems so achievable is the design of the app’s algorithm. The TikTok algorithm assists users in expanding their reach by offering preferred placement within the home page to the first several videos posted by a new user. This means that your first post should be a well-crafted video which showcases exactly what your page has to offer. Remember that you only have a few minutes to sell yourself with your initial post, and only a few seconds to really hook the doom-scrollers that happen across your content.
For the best results, consider shooting a good handful of videos and editing them together before you make your first post, just to make sure you’ve got a hang of the shot composition and editing techniques that work best for you. You certainly don’t want to blow your engagement stimulus on a shoddy product just because you’re new to the fast-paced world of content creation. Once you’ve made three or four posts on TikTok, that engagement algorithm begins to fall by the wayside, so always put your best foot forward when you’re starting out with a new page!
Pre-Shoot And Schedule
One thing that the TikTok algorithm always rewards is consistency. According to many viral creators across the web, this can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you structure your content to take advantage of the TikTok system. When you’re first starting out, your best move is to post consistent content as often as possible. If you can release one video a day that’s ideal, but several per day at the very beginning is even better. The downside to this is that it requires you to always be ahead of an extremely tight schedule, which can be quite difficult to keep up with.
The best practice to stay ahead of the curve is shooting and banking multiple videos from the beginning, and ensuring that you always have a backlog of additional content ready to go for times when you’d like to take a day off, or days that you’re too sick or busy to post. TikTok also contains a video scheduling function, which the algorithm incentivizes heavily. Posting at the same peak times each day will help to engage your core audience, and bolster your follower count as long as you remain consistent. If you’re truly successful with this viral effort, you may come to find it impossible to take a vacation for more than a few days at a time, but such is the life of a TikTok star. When you’re learning how to go viral on TikTok, you have to expect to put a little bit of work in.
Add Tags And Trending Music
One of the most important factors to getting discovered on TikTok is getting your videos on the aptly-titled Discover page. As its name would suggest, the Discover page showcases a number of viral TikTok videos, and promotes certain users based on a number of algorithmic factors. Using trending tags that are relevant to your content can help to support your video’s journey to the Discover tab, and ultimately expose your page to a wider audience of TikTok users.
Additionally, try utilizing trending audio clips or music in your content when possible, as this boosts the likelihood of getting your content on the highly visible Discover section. Some viral songs have seen major success off TikTok alone, and even launched the careers of massive music acts such as Ice Spice and 4Batz. If your niche is music, you should definitely upload your tracks to the TikTok platform and offer other users the opportunity to utilize your sound in their videos. This can help to spread your content passively, allowing you to rake in the referrals from millions of other users.
Interact With Your Followers And Peers
Though TikTok can often feel like a marketplace for the ultra-famous, the video sharing app is technically a social media platform at the end of the day. This means that one of the best ways to drive engagement is to simply engage with others. Watch videos from creators within your niche, leave supportive comments, and interact with the users in your circle without getting negative or relying heavily on self-promotion. Some users build entire reputations off of replying to videos in the comments, rather than posting their own material. While this methodology is less likely to make you go viral, it does offer some instant brand recognition in other people who have curated a similar algorithm to you.
If you do begin to go viral on the platform, you may even get the opportunity to collaborate with other TikTok users, which is a surefire way to drive engagement as it crosses over your budding fan base with the fans of your peers. YouTubers and other internet celebs have utilized collaboration as one of their most important tools in the past, often to spectacular effect.
Be Yourself
The biggest thing to keep in mind while learning how to go viral on TikTok? Be yourself. While it may sound like cliché advice, one of the best things you can do to grow your brand on TikTok is present yourself as you are, in all your imperfect glory. Again, TikTok is a social media platform, meaning the app is primarily used by people seeking an authentic connection to others. Don’t be scared to utilize your genuine sense of humor, actual thoughts and feelings, and vibrant personality on the app, as it isn’t designed to reward cold and distant content. If you follow the above prompts and work hard to offer an array of trending topics within your content, you’re all but guaranteed to find your tribe.
While none of these tips and tricks are foolproof in finding viral success on TikTok, they should at least provide you with a strong foundation to build on. Some users find that their very first posts propel them to massive fame, while others toil away at content creation for years before striking proverbial gold. At the end of the day, we are all laboring under the whims of a mysterious algorithm.
