A 1 month TikTok growth experiment - From 0 to 4.4M views and 10.2K followers

[mahogany41]

I just ran a 1 month growth experiment on TikTok, and wanted to share some of my experiences down below. Hopefully, this can be some valuable insights if you are looking to involve TikTok in your own growth strategy.

Background: No previous experience or user of TikTok. I had my blog where I do book summaries, so I had the content part/niche down.

Experiment: Publish 1-3 videos a day. Tested various formats, and content types. Aimed for the #booktok community.

Outcome: 4.4M views, 10.2K followers. 1 really viral video that drove +90% of the growth.

Learnings:

1. Hooks that engage in the first 4 seconds are critical
2. Build a feed with relevant and consistent content to funnel new visitors into
3. Use popular trends and trending sounds
4. Be active within your target sub-communities
5. Once the viral video hits - engage to maximize growth - comment, produce video answers, etc.
6. Make sure your TikTok profile has content relevant to the audience you aim for
7. Remember: once that viral video hits you are "stuck" with those followers
8. Depending on ICP, TikTok can be an excellent traction channel with massive reach in a short time

Next steps: To achieve consistent views is something I will continue to explore ahead.

Curious to hear if you have looked into TikTok as a growth channel, and what your experiences were?

Also, happy to answer any questions!

 

[seewithgreatereyes]

@mahogany41 How did you create the videos? Did you film yourself? Or did you buy video content from a third party?

 

[mahogany41]

@seewithgreatereyes I just filmed them myself. Using the TikTok app + my iPhone on a small tripod with a ring light. It initially took some time, but once you get up to speed you can easily bang 4-5 out in the evening, and then you have two days of content ready. The tricky part is IMO 1. getting started, and then 2. having the content ideas/outlines in place. Scalability is the next phase!

 

[seewithgreatereyes]

@mahogany41 Thanks, very insightful and real comment.

 

[mahogany41]

@seewithgreatereyes Thanks, glad you enjoyed. Wish you the best in your growth journey ahead!

 

[toinena]

@mahogany41 I used a tool called CAPCUT for making all my TikTok videos. It's a free-to-use, handy tool that allowed me to enhance my video content with trending (or own) music, superimpose text on video, animations, etc. You can also crop the videos directly in the tool and view the results in the TikTok format (i.e., 9:16). Maybe this tool might help you enhance your videos.

PS: I used Pixabay and Pexels for stock videos and images, respectively.

 

[juicemex07]

@mahogany41 Based on your data, you published, on average, 60 videos in a month (assuming 2 a day). But 90% of the growth is from 1 video. That's kinda depressing. But not surprising as I've seen similar data from others who have said the same. Wish TT's algo wouldn't be so concentrated in the top 1% of videos and spread the love more.

 

[mahogany41]

@juicemex07 Exactly, quite an accurate estimate, and I totally agree. It is the consistency that is hard with TikTok, and I’ve also seen a ton of discussions on this recently, where creators with large followings are struggling to get consistent views. But, at the same time building that sort of audience naturally takes time, so I am not really surprised more views has not come out of the rest of the videos yet. Will be interesting to see if avg views/video linearly progresses over time though, let’s say over 6 months, or if it’s all just striking those viral hits. Thanks for sharing!

 

[markchen]

@mahogany41 any updates? :0

 

[toinena]

@mahogany41 Thank you for sharing your experiences! I have also looked at TikTok as a growth channel for my FinTech startup. I have only applied points 3 & 6 for my channel till now. Other than this, I used trending Hashtags related to the content that I am posting and have pinned the most-viewed videos to attract followers. So far I have gained 10K+ followers, but the number of views are still lower than yours. I will try out the other points from your learnings and share my experiences

 

[mahogany41]

@toinena Cool! I also pinned the popular videos to give the feed a boost. Looking forward to follow your results.

 

[derrickolley]

@mahogany41 I'm curious if you have a blueprint / example video you could supply? Doesn't even need to be yours. I've been thinking about doing tiktoks myself

 

[xc37]

@mahogany41 Is there a way to automate the process? Do you post manually every day or can you schedule your posts?

 

[mahogany41]

@xc37 It's easy to make drafts in the app - of both video and text. So I basically just prepared drafts of everything in advance, and then put a reminder to publish at certain times. I have a personal/creator account for this, but I know there is the option to schedule from the browser for TikTok if you switch to a business account. The time-consuming part IMO is scaling the content production to have interesting stuff to say, deliver it in a quality way, and with consistency across everything.

 

[xc37]

@mahogany41 Thank you for the answer.

Yes, content creation definitely takes quite some effort. I imagine the way to go here is also to work in batches. Blocking one afternoon/day and producing as many videos as possible. Or splitting one topic into several sub-topics.

 

[mahogany41]

@xc37 Absolutely agree! Batching is the way to make it scale for video. Nice highlight with the sub-division to make more out of the stuff you already have. Also, to me - writing blogs and summaries were a great source of actually having low-hanging fruit type of content that I already produced and could source from.

 

[firemist]

@mahogany41 How did this increase your sales?

 

[mahogany41]

@firemist I have founded a startup Univid, but have not pushed anything about that on TikTok. So mostly been a separate experiment to see how I can grow an audience focused on books and driving readers for my blog. Got almost a thousand impressions on my blog and some signups for my newsletter from TikTok already. But will focus on building a native audience on there first, and then maybe see how that can be leveraged, if that makes sense?

 

[firemist]

@mahogany41 O okay. Thanks for sharing growth strategy. Interesting experiment anyway, good luck with your project.

 

[elainecrawford]

@mahogany41 Would love to know how to grow followers on insta.