Welcome friend! Looking to take your TikTok account to the next level this year? You‘ve come to the right place.
Gaining followers is key for unlocking opportunities on one of the world‘s fastest growing apps. With over 1 billion monthly active users – and 70% between ages 16-24 – mastering TikTok is critical for reaching younger audiences.
And with the app‘s Ascending Creators model prioritizing viewer engagement over follower count, building an invested audience amplifies content distribution and monetization potential.
This comprehensive guide examines proven tactics for expanding your reach. We‘ll cover optimizing profiles, posting strategies, collaborations, UGC best practices, and more tips tailored for beginners to advanced creators.
Let‘s dive in!
Why Followers Matter: TikTok Influencer Marketing Opportunities
While follower numbers shouldn‘t be the sole metric of success, a large, engaged audience unlocks lucrative partnerships. Some benefits include:
Brand Sponsorships: Sponsored content deals with aligned brands pay creators $100 to $200+ per 1,000 followers. Micro-influencers charge around $500 per sponsor post.
Affiliate Commissions: Linking to products in captions and earning a percentage of sales drives income. Top influencers make 5 figures+ monthly.
Media Features & Event Appearances: Studios, venues, and platforms recruit popular creators for interviews, performances and other opportunities.
Talent Management: Getting signed by a digital talent agency provides assistance with securing deals, contract negotiations and channel growth coaching.
But buying followers or using engagement pods is against TikTok community guidelines and leads to shadowbans or suspensions. Let‘s look at legitimate tactics for expansion.
Step 1: Polish Your Profile
As most users‘ initial impression, ensuring your profile makes a strong first impression is critical. Here are key elements to optimize:
| Profile Section | Optimization Tips |
|---|---|
| Photo | Use a high-quality headshot showing your face/smile clearly. Helps humanize! |
| Name | Stand out by adding middle initials or suffixes, e.g. Sarah K. Johnson. Searchability boost! |
| Bio | Explain who you are, passions and value provided in 150 characters. Include niche hashtags. |
| Link Tree | Add links to other socials and websites for cross-traffic. Linkin.bio is a popular tool. |
| Highlights | Pin your best 1-3 videos as highlights reels for new visitors. Refresh regularly! |
Analyzing profiles of top creators in your niche provides design inspiration to emulate.
Pro Tip: Create TikTok banner images for a professional edge! Promote your best content using Adobe Spark or Canva templates.
Step 2: Strategically Leverage Trends
Leveraging viral sounds, songs, challenges and hashtags is integral for discovery on TikTok. Aligning with trends displayed on the For You and Trending feeds allows you to tap into existing momentum.
However, completely recreating trends won‘t showcase originality. Apply your unique twist! Ideas include:
- Use trending audios over fresh, creative videos
- Blend two or more viral themes together
- Put a novel spin on trend iterations to stand out
Cosplayer Jazzy Guns has mastered this strategy. She creatively utilizes trending audio clips over videos of herself in detailed costumes lip syncing lyrics. This both intersects with niche interests while capitalizing on mainstream sounds for
wider distribution.
Over 2022, Jazzy grew her following count over 10x from 30,000 to 350,000+ followers through this approach.
"I identify songs trending in my target demographic and brainstorm a cosplay character that would create an entertaining mismatch with the audio that my community would find funny. The key is staying true to my core content while ensuring wider discoverability and shareability through strategic trend-jacking." – Jazzy Guns
Step 3: Post Consistently During Peak Hours
TikTok analytics under Insights > Content > Posts displays your target audience‘s activity breakdowns. Identify which days and times followers are most engaged.
Common peak hours for smaller creators are:
- Early Afternoons: 12 pm – 3 pm during students‘ lunch breaks
- Early Evenings: 7 pm – 9 pm aligning with post-dinner relaxation
Posting 1-2 videos daily during active windows trains fans to habitually check back. Consistency maintains an active profile, surfaces content in Following feeds, and exposes you to new viewers without saturating current fans.
Micro-influencer Aspen Tyler credits a consistent evening schedule for her organic growth from 5k followers to over 60k in just 8 months.
Step 4: Collaborate With Nano and Micro-Influencers
Collaborating is an underutilized growth hack that exposes creators to pre-qualified audiences. Initial partnership tiers by follower count include:
| Tier | Follower Count | Growth Potential | Compensation* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nano | 1k – 10k | Med | Shoutouts |
| Micro | 10k – 50k | High | $100+ |
| Macro | 50k – 500k | Very High | $300+ |
*Per post depending on deal terms
Nano-influencers have extremely engaged niche communities primed for cross-over interest.
Compelling collab formats include song duets, outfit transitions, dance challenges, and react videos.
Pro Tip: Tag each other‘s accounts and use transitional captions to organically bridge both communities for mutual gain.
For example, "Thanks @microinfluencer for collabing! If you liked this video, you‘ll LOVE their content about X niche too! Let‘s show their profile some support TikTok fam!"
Reply to @microinfluencer confirming the cross-promotion to align messaging. This compounds visibility and builds social proof.
Step 5: Curate & Redistribute Fan UGC
User-generated content (UGC) makes followers feel valued. Regularly:
- Reposting fan dance covers
- Sharing cooking creations inspired by your recipes
- Reacting to audience outfit checks, jokes, etc
Stitching duets with fan content using TikTok‘s built-in features doubles as entertaining reaction commentary.
Always credit creators via overlays or captions. Discourage removals by proactively inviting UGC shares:
"TikTok fam – tag me in your video creations inspired by my content! Can‘t wait to see what you come up with and might react in a future video!"
This drives participation while showcasing creative supporters.
According to social media research firm Impact++, user-generated content receives 4x higher engagement compared to brand posts. UGC also drives 10-30% increased conversions. Leverage your biggest fans for peer-to-peer recommendations at scale!
Step 6: Reformat Existing YouTube Videos For TikTok
Repurposing attention-grabbing content to new platforms compounds visibility.
For YouTubers, reformatting highlights from streams, let‘s plays, vlogs and challenges introducing your personality effectively migrates audiences.
Best practices include:
- Trimming longer videos into 15 to 60 second short-form spotlights
- Adding text overlay captions to convey context
- Inserting end cards directing viewers to check out the full video on YouTube
- Using #Shorts hashtag to optimize YouTube algorithm surfacing
This cross-pollination enriches personal brand awareness and provides lead generation avenues to nurture higher-intent subscribers.
According to Hootsuite, multi-channel efforts increase content reach by 80% on average.
Step 7: Host Contests & Giveaways
Creative follower giveaways incentivize shares, hashtags, and tagging friends to participate – expanding awareness of your profile.
Require users complete certain actions to enter like:
- Following your TikTok account
- Mentioning friends to spread the word
- Using a campaign hashtag you can trace
Select winners randomly using sites like CommentPicker that filter qualified entrants. State any follow purges post-contest upfront to set expectations.
While resource-intensive, launched effectively giveaways can drive a surge of thousands of followers over announcement periods.TIME magazine partnered with Nano creator Kittiesmama for a cat wall art contest that attracted over 64,000 submissions!
Step 8: Respond To ALL Comments
Individualized responses to every audience comment cultivates personal connections with supporters beyond passive viewers.
Even just liking, a laughing emoji, heart, or thanks signals you digest responses as more than simply engagement metrics.
Scheduling 15-30 minutes daily to browse latest comments keeps conversations flowing. Set notifications so you never miss updates enabling real-time replies.
Top YouTubers like MrBeast stress comment response importance:
"I manually heart every single comment. That little heart makes someone‘s day — it takes one second. Don’t lose sight of that." – MrBeast
These micro-interactions compound to drive loyalty and satisfaction.
Let‘s Recap TikTok Follower Growth Tips
We‘ve covered several tactics from optimizing branding to collabs, UGC and giveaways for expanding your TikTok following. Let‘s do a top level recap:
Profile Polish: Profile photo, name, bio, links, highlights
Leverage Trends: Align with viral sounds, songs, hashtags
Peak Posting Times: Schedule during audience prime hours
Strategic Collaborations: Team up with nano and micro-influencers
Curate UGC: React to fan content in stitched duets
Cross-Promote Content: Repurpose videos from other platforms
Run Contests & Giveaways: Drive follows through prizes
Respond To Comments: Heart and reply to all feedback
Still have questions? Drop them below and I‘m happy to help further! Let me know which tips you find most effective after testing them out.
Good luck and happy growing!
