TikTok Growth Q&A Transcript

What that same 30 minutes you’ve got all that new awareness, potentially thousands of people on TikTok where on YouTube that same 30 minutes got you, let’s just say you made three videos, 60 views, so thousands versus 60. All right, what’s going on everybody? Bring your questions and I’m going to do my best to answer them. Um, here’s the thing. If you want a question, try to get your entire question in one comment because once all of these questions start coming, it gets harder and harder to follow along. Okay? All right. First question, why should we switch to pro? Switching to pro enables you to have analytics that you wouldn’t get otherwise.

Like, you can see the general analytics of your account. You can see the most viewed videos in the last seven days. If you’ve got hundreds of videos like I do, it’ll give you an idea of like where most of your followers are coming from. So that’s why you would enable pro mode. You can also go video by video to see the percentage of viewers they came from the “for you” page or otherwise. And just basically you can get an idea for what’s working and what’s not. So that’s how it enables you to grow faster and it’s free. Why not?

I can’t read your username. I am Eero goo watching, it’s time important. If you ask what time do you suggest I suggest you post? Basically just kind of use your gut, pay attention when you post. Certain people, you know, you might have more success posting at night, certain people during the day. I know and you know the day matters too, right? Like if it’s a weekday or weekend and you have a lot of younger audience, you know, they’re going to be more active on a Saturday or Sunday, around noon or whatever. It just depends on your audience. For me, before all this quarantine stuff, I noticed if I post around 1:00 or 2:00 PM, so the post had already been kind of approved and then all of a sudden people are getting off of school. They’re checking TikTok on their school bus or on their walk home from the school bus or whatever when they first got home.

You know, if it was a video that was kind of designed for a younger audience that would do better. How are you doing James? Thank you all for all the kind words. Sam wants to know how can I become a star? Well, I guess it depends on your definition of a star. Like I think a lot of people are trying to be the next Charlie, but if you want to be the next Charlie, I think you need to bring something new to the table. You’re not going to beat Charlie by doing what Charlie does. You have to be better than Charlie. Demetrius says, how do you go live? Cause I have 5K and it doesn’t show the button. Well, that’s interesting. Usually, at 1K you would unlock the button.

If you’re not in the US you know, the rules maybe a little bit different or you know, you might have lost trust with TikTok and then this ring light is really shining in my glasses. But yeah, you may have lost trust with TikTok maybe. Did you get a lot of videos removed or anything like that? Mic reacts. How do I break past one cave use consistently? I’ve been hitting 500, 600 is kind of my max. Really all you have to do is get one really good video and then everything changes. I remember I was getting like a hundred or less for my first few when I first kinda got serious. And then I think it was my 21st video that got a couple of thousand views and I was like, Oh, awesome. I unlocked whatever. I kind of figured it out. And then once I had that good video, you know, all of my videos got at least a couple of hundred. And now, I think like an average video for me now is probably like 4 to 5,000 after 24 hours.

And you’ll notice as your account grows and grows and grows, your numbers will go up. Is this ring light annoying on my glasses? I don’t know. Kind of weird. Right? I might have to re angle it now that my contacts subscription ran out. So I’ve been kind of prescription I should say. I should be getting new contacts this week, but I’m sitting here in my glasses. Juju says Jeff has been a goat since day one. He’ll never switch and go, guys, we’ve got to think outside the box to grow. Absolutely. You got it. We all gotta be stepping our game up cause, you know, a lot more people are joining the platform. You know, I’m seeing people that I’m friends with on Facebook, they’re wanting to hop on here after I’ve been telling them to after I’ve been telling people to for months, you know, they’re finally starting to get on board cause I guess they’ve got more free time. Maybe they’re seeing the opportunity, but, those of us who got in early, you know, we’ve got some extra growth out of it, but I think there’s a lot of potentials still to grow.

Demetrius says I had hundreds of thousands of views, every TikTok and now I have a hard time getting over 500. Okay, well, You know, there’s a lot more people on the platform now, so if you’re still doing the same stuff you were doing before, and expecting the same kind of reach, you know, you might be having to reinvent yourself or step up your game somehow. We all gotta be stepping up our game. By the way. I don’t know if not everybody saw it. I put a free TikTok Growth Guide in my bio so you can go in there and basically it’ll ask for your email address and it’ll send it to you via email. So it’s just a one-page guide. It takes about five minutes to read with all my best tips. So definitely recommend downloading that. Tiffany says, I almost have 1 million views for the month. That’s great. Tiffany, I’ve been kind of, you know, I’ve been watching your progress over the last few months. You’ve been doing great. John Hart says, do you see traditional media channels moving to TikTok? Absolutely. Everybody’s going to be here. I think this is the new Instagram.

Yeah, I think Instagram is worried and that’s why, I don’t know if y’all notice, but as you scroll through, you’re seeing Facebook messenger ads and Instagram ads. Have y’all seen the Instagram ads? So like when your competition is advertising on your platform, I think that’s a sign that they’re a little concerned.

Laurie says, would it be a good idea if I did a niche like eight years? I believe that’s after-effects tutorials but also do trends and challenges. Yeah, I think you know, if you’re niched that means you have your target audience figured out. I’ve been kind of supplementing with some more viral videos and the way I tie it all together, my viral video that y’all may have seen was me pressure washing offense. It got 15.2 million views I think at this point. And the way I tied it to my channel, which is like TikTok or like marketing education was like the next video, the next video. It was actually the one that helped my channel the most, which was, Hey, here are the five reasons that this video, I’ve got 15.2 million views, follow me for more TikTok tips. And it wasn’t until people saw that next video did they start following me? It wasn’t from the 15.2 million is when I tied everything together. Right. So if you can find a way to tie everything together, that’ll help you a lot. Trap source says, didn’t you tag that video from someone else though? I don’t know if you’re claiming that I borrowed it or stole it.

No, that is me. Pressure washing my fence in my backyard and I can literally take the photo inside if you don’t believe me. Cause I just finished it. It took three weekends of pressure washing to finally finish and I kind of feel like I want to do it some more because some of them are not, I dunno. Anyway, getting off-topic here. By the way, if I miss your question, which is highly probable because there’s a lot of people in chat, just keep asking it and I’ll get to it eventually. By the way, don’t forget the free TikTok Growth Guide in my bio and just put it up last week. It’s got my best tips and go grab that.

All right. Darren Brock says, Darren says, I see one every few days. I’m not sure what you’re talking about. My kid sees one every 10 vids I make content he doesn’t connect. I think you’re talking about the ads. Yeah, there may be a connection there. Most paid ads are, behavior-based, whether it’s Facebook, Google. All right. The Theo, the Greek says, do duets reach new audiences? Yeah, duets are really, really good right now. I recommend doing duets if you haven’t taken advantage of them yet. Yeah, I’ve noticed. Duets in terms of growth give you the best bank for your buck right now cause I don’t know. And one thing I noticed like my original video I put out and a couple of people duetted it, it was a pretty good idea. It was like a, like a TikTok whack a mole game to get people to like click on the screen and like, or whatever.

And I noticed early, some of y’all may have seen this, but some of the people who duetted it got way more views than I did and all they did was like pretend like an airplane in the game. So, and then I started experimenting more and more with duets and some of them exploded, you know, some of them didn’t. But like literally duets are. Yeah, definitely be taken advantage of them right now. Nate wants to know will stepping into a new niche hurt or help? It’s a good question. You know, I think the more niche your channel is, the easier it is for people to understand what you’re about. And if you’re the person who is like the only person talking about a certain niche and somebody in that niche, of course, they’re going to follow you. But some people get sucked into the trap of like, man, all these people are growing faster than I am, but what you’re forgetting when that happens is they’re getting followed by a bunch of 8 to 12-year-olds, you know, looking to be entertained and you’re looking to get in front of people in your niche.

So if you’ve got your like monitor, if you’ve got, if you have a business, it makes this really easy to figure out. Like, don’t you know, if you’re getting in front of your target market. Well, that’s really great. Um, what I’m trying to do right now is try to do the best of both worlds and uh, I’m kind of supplementing my niche content with some more general content, um, just to get my numbers up and it’s working. You know, I dealt in the last three weeks, I think I have, yeah, more than doubled my followers in the last few weeks. I was at 20K in like March 24th, I think. And now I’m at like 45K or I will be soon if I’m not already, I think I am. Drew wants to know, do curse words in your captions less than the amount of people the algorithm pushes you out too?

I would say yes. And here’s how you can tell, you can either do this on your account or create a new account set and you can set the birthday to like around 12 years old or under and, they keep tweaking restricted mode. But like the fact that I have kids means that I know this, there’s a certain mode of TikTok that is so locked down that you only see the most squeaky clean content and you know, you can’t comment, you can’t post videos. Let’s just say 10 to 20% of TikTok has that enabled because of just how raunchy and ridiculous TikTok can be for kids at times. It means that only, you know if you have access to that audience because your content doesn’t have curse words then that’s extra views, you know, they may not be able to comment or follow you, but I mean, that’s views which can help you like that, that engagement can help you. So I would recommend, trying to be a little bit more clean because it’ll unlock more brand sponsorships if that’s what you’re after. Like, if you’re trying to become an influencer, you know, I would try to keep things a little bit more clean cause like, can you imagine Nike wanting to sponsor somebody who’s like making like off-kilter jokes about, you know, you’ve seen some, I don’t, I don’t need to repeat it, but you’ve seen some of the stuff that’s on TikTok, you know? Yeah. So if you’re trying to be an influencer, you’re trying to unlock like legit brand sponsorships one day and, you know, I would recommend keeping things a little bit cleaner. AK talk X says, is there a way to filter out the raunchy stuff trying to stay wholesome niche? Well, the more stuff that you like, thank you for the TikTok Anthony. The more stuff that you like and swipe through, it’ll kind of know like, Oh, well this person’s not really into this raunchy stuff.

But you can’t, like, there’s no like setting you can hit. Like if you go in restricted mode last I checked and completely locked everything down. Restricted mode on TikTok is kind of a joke right now. But hopefully, they fix that towards more like YouTube in the future, which is pretty good. Like I feel confident letting my kids on YouTube with a restricted mode on. I don’t feel that way at all on TikTok because it’s so locked down. Let anyone want to use the app. Drew says I’m sitting on about 5k subscribers. I think you mean followers. I guess this the same thing on here. Uh, looking for anything that helps. Well, check out the TikTok Growth Guide that’s in my bio. And then if you download that, the people who download that I send an invite to my growth community so you’ll, you’ll have access to that where you can actually ask me questions and I can answer them.

Baymon says or asks any advice for cooking content accounts? Yeah, for cooking content. I recommend keeping it short. I recommend finding your target audience based on whatever your goal is. Like, if you’re trying to drive subscribers to your YouTube channel or something like that, you know, find your target audience and find them on here, right? Unless you’re trying to be super general. My growth guide in my bio can help you with that as well. Trap source. My “for you” page is full of car videos. How do I fix that? Uh, just swipe past them very quickly when you realize it’s the car video and TikTok should be smart enough to not serve those to you anymore as much. Zachary says, if I post six-plus times a day, will TikTok suggest me? Um, yeah, I mean if you’re, if your content is good, I don’t have a problem with six times a day or even more.

I think that can be really good. And usually, the people who are struggling and they reach out and they don’t understand why they don’t have more viewers is because they only have a few videos. So I think if you’re cranking out six a day, that’s fine. Just make sure it’s quality, make sure it’s on track and make sure you’re experimenting a little bit with different types of content. I think you just at that point, one of your videos should hit decently and then you’d be like, Oh, I’ll do more of this and then milk it.

Zachary wants to know is there an optimal amount of videos per day? I think it’s four, five maybe. Um, and the reason it’s four or five and you can do more, but it’s, you know, it’s hard. Like, especially if people who aren’t, you know, now that people have a lot more free time, you can crank out more. I think that’d be fine. But like I think if you go to too many videos, you can start going down on the quality. So you want to make sure you have good quality and good qualities, not just production quality. It’s like good ideas, good execution. It’s not just like having a ring light.

HRH. Dot. Heather will TikTok tell users if they get shadowbanned, if they pull down your video, they’ll tell you. Um, there are certain situations which I almost never see is like when you’re, so you’re so smackdown, um, you’re not quite suspended, but you know, your likes aren’t counting and stuff like that really. I don’t know, people talk about it, but I’ve personally never seen it. I think what people call shadow band is like, they just put it out like a really bad video or TikTok thinks it’s a really bad video. And so like they don’t have used. And then the next few videos also have the same thing and then they feel like their shadowbanned when it’s like they uploaded three potentially bad videos. So typically when people say their shadow banned, they’re not, they think they’re shadowbanned, but they’re just misdiagnosing what’s happening. John wants to know, how should a restaurant or hotel build an online presence for TikTok for branding purposes? Well, first they should figure out who their target audience is, right? And for a hotel, you know, that’s people probably in a certain, area of the world who make a certain amount of money. Maybe there a certain age, maybe they’re, maybe they’re 25 to 50,

So they’re going to be putting out content that um, kind of showcases what they have to offer, but at the same time entertains their target audience. So they’re probably not going to be putting out stuff that appeals to eight to 12-year-olds so much. Or maybe they do, right? Maybe it’s a family hotel with a whole lot of kid activities. Like if that’s the case, yeah, maybe you do go out to 8 to 12 years old and then they begged their parents to take them to that certain hotel with all that really cool stuff for kids. But if it’s more of an adult type of thing, you know, maybe they, they create content that’s appealing to them. So that’s why in my TikTok Growth Guide that’s on my bio, we start with our goal and then based on our goal, we’d go to our target audience and then we really have to get those first two things down before we can create the right type of content. Tiffany wants to know, what do you think about staying in a small, specific niche versus diversifying a little bit? Yeah, so my niche I guess is kind of entrepreneurial type. It’s a little bit broad, but I think since I’m early on TikTok, I think that’s okay to get a little bit more broad than I typically want on a YouTube or something like that. So it’s like entrepreneurial types, marketing type people who are interested in growing their TikTok or they’re just taking their lives to the next level. I guess it’s a little bit broad. Um, but I also have diversified a little bit, which we saw with that pressure washer video. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. It just looked cool and I had, I had a feeling it would go viral and it did just because it looks cool and satisfying.

But the way I, the way I made that work is by my next video, which was, Hey, this is the five reasons this video got 2 million views at the time. Now it has 15.2. But anyway, I was like, here are the five reasons that this video got a ton of views. Follow me for more TikTok tips. So that’s kinda how I made it all work together. And I think that if you don’t, yeah, I think you can diversify a little bit. As long as you, your channel, your, your followers might start on following you if like, Oh, well this guy used to be this, but now he’s this, eh, I might unfollow. But I think if you keep it under like 10 to 20%, you should be all right to diversify your content a bit.

Digital journalists asked, should I stick with just TikTok or post to several social media channels? I took the question. Um, I think that the opportunity on TikTok is very good. So I would spend most of your time on, on TikTok and, and um, LinkedIn’s good too if you’re into, into the B2B space, if you’re trying to get in front of businesses. Um, but like TikTok is going to give you your best bang for your buck. So when we talk about using our time wisely, we talk about using our time efficiently. What do you, what’s, what’s the thing you can do to leverage the most? I think spending the most time on TikTok is your best bet right now because it’ll give you the best return for your time investment going forward. So like let’s, let’s go, let’s take the example of spending 30 minutes of your time of your day of your life creating, um, you know, a small handful of videos for a TikTok versus creating like a couple of videos for YouTube, right?

What’s the difference? Well, um, if you have no YouTube following and you have just, you know, the typical under a hundred followers, you know, you might get 20 views if you’re lucky on YouTube, right? Where on TikTok you probably get 20 views on every single one of your videos and maybe one of them hits into the couple hundred or thousands, right? So what that same 30 minutes you’ve got all that new awareness, potentially thousands of people on TikTok were on YouTube that same 30 minutes. Got you. Let’s just say you made three videos, 60, 60 views, so thousands versus 60 for that same 30 minutes, which one of those two seems like a better time investment? Um, now TikTok organic reach will decline eventually and it is declining with all these new people joining. So, um, yeah, that’s pretty much it.

It should be. It should be pretty obvious, but you know, you spend a little time on YouTube, why not? But just don’t get crazy with it. I have a meeting in about 13 minutes, so I’m going to end this in about five more minutes. So let me get a few more questions. And by the way, the guide is in my bio. Go ahead and grab it. Um, you can wait til after the live if you want. I am going to be, um, putting this on YouTube, assuming it was recorded correctly by my recording software. That is going to be something that I tried. So I am going to repurpose this and put it on my YouTube. Let’s see how that pans out. And I was kind of doing it as an experiment. Thank you for the little bang. Um, I wanted to, um, show people that just because you’re doing a live doesn’t mean that live has to disappear.

So that’ll be a nice, cool piece of content coming forward. Um, as I always have been doing since I, since I started TikTok, there’s just kind of experimenting, observing and sharing those findings with you. Um, to provide value. I don’t, I don’t work for TikTok. I don’t have any, insight or knowledge. I’ve never talked to anyone at TikTok like a lot of people claim to, Hey, I talked to a TikTok employee. Guess what he told me? But they conveniently don’t say his name. Getting a little tired of seeing that for the last few months. Um, can you record your lives? Not easily, but I will of course. I will explain to you guys how I did that, if it, if it popped off properly, which it looks like it is.

So, all right. Let me get, let me get two more questions and then, yeah, we’ll be good. All right. My art 1979 asks, it seems that my lives cap around 20 viewers. Do I, do you know why? Well, they’re probably, um, you know, you’re probably just not driving the amount of, um, you know, you probably just don’t have that many followers, man. It’s probably that simple. And so you know, the people who know you go live or your followers, so if you’ve only got so many followers, um, you know, and if you’ve been doing some of that support, small creator stuff, well that’s going to, um, for you because a lot of those followers are only going to be following you because they, uh, they think you’re going to follow them back. They don’t really care about you or your content.

So a lot of people have these very inflated follower numbers, but most of those people just don’t really care because yeah, it’s transactional, which I, which I said in a recent TikTok hopefully somebody else saw that. All right, final question. How should I promote music on TikTok? Good question. All right. So promoting music on TikTok, what do we see? We see a lot of dances. We see a lot of people, I’m dancing to all these songs. Everybody’s doing the same dance. It’s almost like a, like a, a virtual line dance where everybody just does the same dance. Very few people are, are coming up with original or having success doing your reasonable dances. So, um, where do these, uh, these, these dances start? Um, I believe they start with an influencer. They don’t necessarily start with a Charlie or an Addison. I don’t think maybe, maybe a few of them have.

But what I would do is reach up, reach out to a bunch of influencers with good followings and ask them like, Hey, what would it take for you to, uh, choreograph and post a dance to this song? Um, you know, you might, you might find some who are willing to do it for like 20 bucks. You might find some who loved the song so much. They’re willing to do it for free. Um, maybe you have some, they’re willing to do it. Um, if you, if you cross-promote them like if you had the same amount of followers or similar amount of followers, you might find some who want a, you know, a couple of thousand bucks. But I would like to put a budget together and reach out to some influencers or like maybe one influencer that you really would really want to do it and like, Hey, what would it cost me?

And then, you know, they come up with a dance, they do that dance and then if that dance is good, if the song is good, if, if it really resonates with people, next thing you know, um, you know, a whole bunch of people who are doing that same dance, right? And then you do, I mean that you’re talking about, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like if, if a song truly takes off as a trend on here and you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of marketing, um, if not more, we take the example of Roddy rich with the box. A lot of y’all don’t know this, but he had only had two mixtapes that the song and I made a whole TikTok about this, but that song, the box was on his very first actual album, which, um, you know, I don’t want to say he was a nobody, but I mean he wasn’t killing it. Like he was relatively unknown. The box came out and he was the number one song on like Spotify and Google music. Um, a couple of weeks later because of TikTok and it all started with, you know, a couple of people like doing little stuff to his, and it wasn’t necessarily a dance. In his case, it was like somebody, and I found the very first person who TikTok the box. He was like squeezing your mirror.

And that was the very first TikTok on the box. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be a dance, but it was a, you know, it was, uh, it was, uh, you know, maybe somebody with a 100 to 200,000 followers on TikTok at the time. And this is like what, January, February, something like that, whatever, whatever it was. Maybe it was December, but, um, of 2019. But whatever it was, it wasn’t the biggest influencer who, um, did something with a song and made it explode. So that’s my answer on how to promote a song on TikTok. Alright, that’s gonna do it. I have to get ready for this meeting in about seven minutes. Go on my bio and grab my free TikTok Growth Guide. And I think, uh, I think you’ll find it valuable because it’s, uh, it’s really easy to read. It’s a, it’s a one-page thing. It has all my best tips on figuring out your target audience and creating content for them and all my best, like tactical tips, like how often to post and stuff like that. So go ahead and grab my guide and let me know what you think. All right, I’m going to be putting this video on, um, on YouTube. If you missed any of it. I’m going to be putting this on YouTube, so go follow me on YouTube. It’s just Jeff Couret,