Guidance for Creating and Posting Effective Content to Gain Followers
It can be quite a challenge to grow your audience on the TikTok platform. I know I would have really appreciated having a written guideline to help me start out. I watch and still watch countless YouTube videos and follow the experts to keep up with the ever-changing trends.
You might ask what affiliate marketing has to do with TikTok. The simple answer is monetization. In order to monetize (make money on TikTok) you have to meet certain requirements and that usually translates into follower requirements. To get followers, you have to create content much like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook and other social media platforms.
In this article I am going to dive into what I’ve learned from mentors regarding content strategy, search optimization and a few other key tips that can help you boost your follower count in 2024.
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Content Strategy:
Content strategy begins with the two types of content you actually post on your profile. These two types of content fall under the 70/30 rule. What this means is that you should create around 70% videos and 30% carousel posts.
Videos consist of 30 seconds up to 10 minutes of you filming yourself, someone else, something happening, something doing a thing, explaining something, etc.
Carousels are a series of still-life pictures of someone and/or something with a text and/or speech/music overlay to explain the meaning of the presentation. Carousel posts are much easier to create than videos, and they allow you to test out different hooks and topics to see what resonates with your audience.
Making carousels is going to allow you to accomplish two things:
- Produce more content because it’s easier to create a carousel post than a photo post because you don’t actually have to take the time to edit it. You’re just taking a collection of photos, adding text over them for your hook, a call to action and some type of story throughout.
- You might not see a lot of carousel posts, but there actually are. There is a huge audience that is attracted to those. Very few TikTok video personalities are the type viewers want to hear over and over. Unfortunately, we may not recognize that we are boring, annoying, or irritating. Therefore, mixing up the content with 30% carousels will help our chances for the number of followers.
More people are shown content based off of the content that they interact with, and won’t scroll past a carousel post because they’re intrigued with the story.
MUSIC
As is usual practice on any platform, we can’t use copyrighted music on content being monetized and it is very difficult to know which music that encompasses.
One group, Universal Music Group and TikTok had a huge argument and to no one’s surprise, Universal is taking all of their artists’ music off of TikTok.
If you happen to have a ton of TikToks with music affected by this policy, likely it will be muted until you go back in and reassign approved music for your content. If not, it could lead to a decrease in views and potentially hurt your account in the long term. Unfortunately, we get a violation or penalty for having this music on our accounts, even though TikTok provided the songs.
Now, however, the music listed in the TikTok library is available for use and free from fear of copyright. Here is an article that offers a list of places to find copyright-free music as well: Wordstream.
KEEPING UP WITH TRENDS
More than 50% of people under the age of 35 are currently coming to TikTok to do searches. Your content needs to be that of videos that are showing up. If they’re not, you’re missing out on getting more views, more followers, you’re not ranking for search within your Niche and you’re missing a huge opportunity.
Why would this be a huge mistake right now? Because you only need 10,000 followers on TikTok to be able to get monetized. TikTok is leaning more and more into monetizing creators who have over 10,000 followers so you need to reach that goal as quickly as possible if you want a piece of this affiliate marketing pie.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Ranking in search is the second most important element in reaching the goal of monetization in affiliate marketing. Keywords, hashtags, descriptions they all matter. When you watch a video you like or one that has high view/like rate, read the description. Look at the hashtags and understand how they relate to the video message.
There are two things that really matter right now when it comes to ranking for search.
- The actual metadata of your post. Four main things that TikTok is looking at:
- description of your post.
- your hashtags.
- the text that you’re putting on the screen.
- the voiceover that you’re adding.
You can add text to speech, or you can just add subtitles to your TikTok videos.
TikTok is taking the information that you’re putting in those four categories and using that as metadata, determining who they should be showing your content to. They also consider the length of your content and what you used to create it. I got in trouble for making a cartoon out of gifs and clipart. It was deemed “unrecommendable because it was low content”.
- The second thing that matters is whether you’re solving the searcher’s problem. It could be somebody searching for a video about those store-bought cinnamon rolls turned into bakery shop-style sin-namon rolls or how to fold a fitted sheet. Whatever it takes to solve the viewer’s issue and the way that TikTok determines whether or not you’re doing that, will be based on the engagement that your post gets and the watch time it gets.
It’s that simple. If you’re able to do those two things you’re going to rank for search. You’re going to get more followers and more views 24/7.
Let me stress two other things that you might be doing right now that are slowing your growth on TikTok. You want to make sure that you’re changing these two things because if you’re not it’s going to lead to a decrease in amount of views that you’re getting during the easiest time ever to grow on TikTok.
The first one is you need to make sure that you’re posting enough. But more importantly, you’re not posting too much. I know but listen. If you have a post that’s doing well and it’s going viral. Say, your typical post gets 300 views but then you do a post that gets 10,000 views in the first few hours.
Here is what you need to do. Take 24 hours off posting. If you had posted that video at 10:00 a.m. on the 5th, take off from posting the rest of the day on the 5th, the rest of the day on the 6th, and then post a follow up post at 10:00 a.m. on the 7th.
That follow-up post that you do, shouldn’t be whatever post you had planned for that day, instead, it should be a follow-up to any of your videos that did well and went viral (250,000 – 1 million views). Keep on the same topic or respond to a spicy comment that you got with a video. Ideally, you want that comment to be one that people are going to interact with.
Let it serve as a hook, to increase the number of views that you get. It’s going to allow you to double down on the topic that you were talking about by perhaps directing people to search for that video.
POSTING
You should be posting one to three times a day. A lot of people will go to the comment section right now and try to start the argument that they care more about quality over quantity of content.
The truth is that you only accomplish the creation of quality content if you create and upload a large quantity of content. You need to actually put in the work to get good at it. Learning is in the journey. You’re probably looking at your favorite creators right now or competitors within your niche thinking that you should be doing exactly what they’re doing. You can’t be because you haven’t traveled their journey; paid the dues they have; put in the time; sweated the blood and tears.
You don’t understand the work that they put in to be able to get to that point. No effort you put out is wasted. You learn from every experience, win or lose. For example, Mr. Beast has made thousands and thousands of videos for tens of years so guess what, he’s put in the work to get the quality of content that he’s trying to create by putting in the quantity. You need to have that same exact drive.
The final thing you need to make sure you’re doing is spend 90% of your attention in the first 3 seconds of your video if your video is less than 60 seconds long.
If your video is greater than 60 seconds long, spend 90% of your attention in the first 15 seconds.
Why? You have to get people to stop scrolling. If you don’t have a good hook, then you are not going to get the views that you ultimately want on TikTok. It is going to come down to the first 3 seconds or the first 15 seconds.
You’re putting so much effort into what happens in the middle of the video or what happens at the end of the video and it doesn’t even matter because nobody’s going to see it if they don’t get through the beginning part of the video.
There are a few things that you can do to adapt to this one. Studying your competitor’s videos that are on the same topics that you’re going to be creating. You’re going to watch some dogs, I guarantee you, but you learn from them too.
Pay attention to the WPS (words per second) that they’re speaking in the first 10 seconds of the video. This is going to control the pacing of the video and what the viewer experiences.
Second, pay attention to the audio that they’re using. If you’re not using similar, you might not be addressing the emotional appeal that your competitors are creating. As a result, you won’t get the views that you want.
Third, create a video on TikTok and then duplicate it but delete the first 3 seconds or the first 15 seconds and create a new 3 seconds or a new 15 seconds. Then upload different versions of that video. This will enable you to see how effective the hook is. For example, you could do one with or without music. One with text on the screen. One without text on the screen. One starts the video with a challenge versus not starting the video with a challenge.
This is going to reveal to you that even though the video is completely the same, only the hook is different, and you’re going to get a drastically different number of views. This is the ultimate proof you need to show you how much that first 3 to 15 seconds really matters, depending on how long your piece of content is.
Finally, you should make sure that you’re collecting good hook books. Whether it be in your notes or you’re screenshotting them you need to make sure whenever you scroll through TikTok you ask yourself why am I watching this video and why am I interested in this video.
Then brainstorm two to three ways that you could do that for your niche or for a new topic that you’re going to be creating. This is going to make you way better at actually creating TikTok content, getting more watchers and ultimately more followers, which is going to allow you to monetize on TikTok sooner.
If you’re a seasoned internet user, you realize that e-commerce is fierce and changes daily. The strategies mentioned above are basic guidelines, but they will eventually evolve with new technology, trends, and generational adaptations. Step in now, to take advantage of the recommendations that will presently get you started on this remarkable opportunity that is available on TikTok now.
Consistency and adapting to platform changes are crucial for success on TikTok. Keep putting out great content, keep learning, and keep adjusting your strategy.
Adapted from lessons of Robert Benjamin