How to Get Followers on TikTok

As our society has quickly turned to an age of social media over the past decade, platform giants such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have dominated the industry, each securing millions of users each year and further cementing their impact on the way people connect, learn, and live. Yet in the past few years, a new player has emerged onto the social media scene: TikTok. The question on everyone’s mind these days is, “how to get followers on TikTok?”

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What is TikTok?

In 2016, Chinese company ByteDance shook up the playing field with a revolutionary new short-video based platform with a refreshingly unique algorithm known as TikTok. Unless you have been hiding under a rock somewhere for the past couple years, odds are you have heard of this now social media giant. As of 2021, TikTok has a billion active users.

Despite any preconceived notions that you might have over whether or not you should take this exponentially growing platform seriously, the numbers don’t lie. As a result of the short-video based style, as well as its sharing algorithm, TikTok engagement has been significantly higher than that of the other social media giants. So much so, in fact, that many companies, both big and small, have begun to take full advantage of it by launching large-scale advertising campaigns through deals with platform content creators.

Many of these content creators have grown their respective pages so much that they have seemingly become household names overnight. The question then becomes, how? How to get followers on TikTok? This article is going to answer these questions and help you on your way to TikTok fame.

How to Get More Followers on TikTok

Use Popular/Trending Songs

Many of the most popular content creators on the platform have achieved this level of fame by using trending songs in their creation of a corresponding dance. TikTok influencers such as Charlie D’Amelio, Dixie D’Amelio and Addison Rae, among others, have used this tactic to grow their fan bases substantially. The combination of the smooth dance moves along with the popular song does exceptionally well within TikTok’s algorithm.

The reason for this is that TikTok often strikes deals with different record labels to push certain songs on their platform to increase that song’s sales and ultimately land them a spot on the charts. As crazy as it may seem to say this, you might be one recommended TikTok song away from fame.

But how do you know for sure that the song that you are using is “recommended” by TikTok? The platform actually makes finding these songs extremely easy. The app will offer a large list of recommended songs before and after the creation of your video. Choose one of those and you should be all set!

Use Trending Hashtags in Your Captions

Trends might be the single most important aspect of the TikTok algorithm. Whether it be a popular meme, song, dance or challenge, if you can hop onto a trend at the right time and pair it with the right hashtag, it can really go the extra mile in getting your video out to the masses.

Here’s why. On top of working with different record labels, TikTok also does business with popular brands and companies hoping to promote their products and services. When these companies come to TikTok with a pitch, it is almost always centered around a specific hashtag and audio. Therefore, TikTok will reward its content creators with more engagement if they participate in the campaign and use these hashtags and audio tracks.

But how do you know what hashtags to use? There are a few options available. Odds are, if you found out about a trend, you most likely watched someone else try it before you decided to give it a try. Go back and find that particular TikTok and see what hashtags they used, and add the same one to your caption. If you aren’t able to find that particular video or are just too lazy to try, TikTok also has an in-app hashtag suggestion tool that is autogenerated based off of the TikTok that you just created. All you have to do is click the hashtag button (#) and the suggestions will start flooding in. Try and use one of those!

Hop on Trends as Early and Often as Possible

As I mentioned before, trends might seriously be the most important aspect of the TikTok algorithm. If I were to take out my phone right now and scroll down my “For You” page, I can guarantee with almost 100% certainly that a trending song, dance, meme or challenge of some sort is going to show up on my screen. When these trends become extremely popular and begin to receive increasingly positive engagement in terms of likes, shares and comments, the TikTok algorithm rewards people that create similar content because it is deemed as high quality.

That being said, when a trend does become extremely popular, users across the platform are all going to be trying to do the same thing in hopes that their TikTok blows up like the ones they based their video off of in the first place. This introduces the problem of having stale and overdone content on your page, which is something that you don’t want to have.

So then how do you solve this problem? There are a few ways to go about it. Say you come across a trend and you really want to give it a try. If it’s a relatively new trend and it is just now picking up, try to create your version of it as soon as possible, so that the odds of your video blowing up are greater than they would be after thousands of others create their similar versions. In the case that the trend has already taken off, which in most scenarios is the case, try to include a unique spin or twist on the trend to really make it your own. Be as creative, spontaneous and crazy as you can possibly be!

Identify your Target Audience

TikTok, like many other social media platforms, truly has content for all niches of life. Sports, gaming, comedy, dance, music, politics, you name it, TikTok has content for it. That being said, when a platform has so many different kinds of content to offer its users, there simply is no possible way that someone can view it all. Therefore, TikTok tailors a user’s experience based off of the content that they like.

Say a user likes a TikTok of an NBA player hitting a buzzer beating shot. The TikTok algorithm recognizes that that user likes basketball and will thus show the user more basketball content. Therefore, it is incredibly important to identify the target audience for your content. If you make basketball content, target basketball fans. If you make gaming content, target gamers. Once you identify and tailor your content towards a target audience, TikTok will begin to display your content to these people and boom! You’re in!

Post at the Right Time

Posting at a time in which your target audience is active is very helpful in increasing the overall engagement on your posts. But how do you know what times your target audience is active? It’s pretty simple. If you have a TikTok Pro account, the platform offers a variety of helpful analytics including the specific days and hours that your audience is most active. In order for these analytics to actually prove useful to you though, you do have to engage in your own experimentation of sorts in terms of posting times. A few weeks of experimenting should help you determine when the best time to post is based on how successful your content is when posted at a particular time.

Collaborate with Other Content Creators

Once you successfully identify your target audience and you begin to establish yourself within that particular content community, collaborating with other creators within that community is an excellent way to increase your follower count. It’s all about getting yourself out there to as big of an audience as you possibly can. The more engagement you have on your profile, the better.

TikTok has Truly Become an Excellent Tool in Marketing

Now you should know how to get followers on TikTok. Whether you are trying to market yourself as a personality or a brand/company, the potential for growth on TikTok is undeniable. The entire concept of marketing in general is to get your product/service out there to as many people as you possibly can and the algorithm that TikTok provides to its users is as good, or even better than any of the other social media platforms out there right now. Average everyday people and businesses alike have seen their entire lives change seemingly overnight by following many of the tips provided in this article and with the growth that TikTok has seen over the past couple years, it is safe to say that this platform is here to stay. Why not give it a try? Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next biggest TikTok star!