How to Go Viral video on TikTok
So you are wondering how to go viral on TikTok, huh? Well, I don't blame you! It is the social media platform that everyone can't stop talking about, and the app has grown tremendously since the start of the quarantine. It's no longer a place where pre-teens do silly dances and lip-sync, but rather a community where people of all ages share content on anything from silly dog videos to astronaut lives. Let's share Any type of content can be successful on the home platform, which is what makes it so much fun.
The first thing you need to know is that in its current state, TikTok has the potential to give each video an opportunity by showing it to a smaller audience on your page (FYP). Yes, even if you have 0 followers. If your video does well with this small group, TikTok will continue to bring it to more people it thinks will love it. Because of this, you can usually tell within the first hour or two if you have a viral video on hand.
While I just joined Tiktok 3 months ago, I personally have more than 14 million video views in the last 30 days, so I'm here to help you learn how to go viral on Tiktok.
I have spent the last 4 years exploring social media analytics and organic growth trends.
Okay, so how do you go viral on TikTok? Here are my best tips:
1. Start your video with loud sound.
TikTok is a fast-paced app where you have to quickly grab people's attention before you can swipe up on your videos to view other content. If there is no action by the end, most people will not watch. Set the tone and subject of the video in the first few seconds so that people understand what they are watching.
2. When setting the length of the video, keep it as short as possible
Unless you're telling a long story that really requires a full one minute video, I'd recommend keeping your clip short and to the point. TikTok looks at the average length of view as a way of evaluating the quality compared to the length of the video. You are more likely to see people watch 8 seconds of a 10-second video than 48 seconds of a one-minute-long video.
3. Record your audio.
Listen, we all know that our phones and apps have the power to take what we're saying and make decisions based on that audio (ie showing us ads). TikTok wants to show your content to the right audience, and will use all the tools it provides you to figure out what your video is about, and show it to the right people. You can do this in your captions or hashtags, which I'll get to later, but by using VoiceOver on your videos, you're giving them significantly more keywords and information about your video. Talk about so they can show you. Content for the right audience.
4. Use trendy music or sounds.
Whether you decide to do a voiceover or not, it's always worth adding trending music to your videos. You can of course choose your own songs, but TikTok is a social platform where people feed trends, so chances are you'll do well if you use current trending songs. Will Work. Always sing quietly with voice over in the background.
Pro-Tip* If you want to use your own song, and tiktok won't allow it, you can just upload it with your audio, select a song and set this other song to 0 You can set the volume as .
5. Tell a story.
Yes, dances can go viral, but there are more stories. Let's be real, unless you are an amazingly talented or hilariously bad dancer, your dance videos are unlikely to go viral on TikTok. For us regular people who have not been blessed by the rhythm gods, we are more likely to go viral by telling an interesting and compelling story. The story can be anything. It could be something interesting that happened in your life, something random happened during your day, a project you did, anything. Just tell a story, and move the plot forward quickly.
6. Share Tips, Advice, Favorites.
People also love to learn on TikTok, so if you have expertise in a particular topic, make informative videos to help people learn more about it. Quick bullet point videos work best for them, with on-screen text guiding the user through short lessons. Similarly, people love to shop on TikTok, so sharing favorite products is also a surprisingly easy way to gain traction (and monetization).
7. Always Have a Strong Call to Action
I think this is probably one of the most important things that will not only help a video to go viral but will also help you increase your following. How good is 5 million views on a video if you only get 2000 followers? Firstly, when TikTok sees a lot of people commenting, liking or following a video, they will naturally bring it to more people. Because of this, it's great to have a call to action like "Like for Part 2", "Follow for More", or "Don't It Flop" in your caption and/or at the end of your video. You obviously need to have a great video for this to work, but adding a strong CTA to a video can make the difference between 2M views with 2K new followers and 9M views with 40k new followers. I recommend that your CTA be at least a few seconds long so that people have time to follow you before moving on to the next video.
8. Add random details for people to comment on.
If I've learned anything from my biggest viral videos, it's that people love to comment on random things in videos. The video is about crossing the US/Canada border, but I randomly mentioned bagels at one point and got lots of comments about cream cheese and the quality of my bagels and where my bagels came from. People like to notice small details, which are not the main focus of the video, and like to comment on them. As I mentioned earlier, the more comments you can get, the more likely you are to go viral. So the more random details you can give people to comment on, the more likely you are to get comments. An easy way is to wear something cool/weird in your video and everyone will ask where it's from, but you can do this in many different ways.
9. Leave some questions unanswered.
This is the key to getting comments, which in turn will help you go viral on TikTok. If you're posting a video and you can imagine that people will have an obvious question - don't make it obvious. This will get lots of comments and help your video perform well.
10. Place the text on the opening video frame
By starting your video with the text on the first slide, viewers in FYP will spend a few seconds reading it and so will naturally stay on the video for a few seconds longer than a video without text. Not only is this good for an average view time from an algorithmic point of view, but if you have a good story, you're more likely to retain some of those viewers.
11. Don't use #FYP, #foryou, or other generic hashtags.
I'm not sure hashtags are always beneficial, but what I'm positive is that #FYP, #foryou, and other wildly generic hashtags will do nothing. Use odd tags, or none at all. If you have a super niche video, niche hashtags can sometimes help TikTok get your video to the right crowd. However, if you are posting something that attracts different people on different platforms, it is best not to pigeonhole it with hashtags and let an algorithm decide who should show it.
Well - that's all my tips for going viral on TikTok for now! Thanks for coming to my TedTalk. I will share updates here as I find new things that work. Let me know if you agree or have other ideas in the comments!