If you’re a social media influencer, TikTok is yours for the taking in 2021. The platform is still exploding in popularity despite enjoying a superb 2020, with total users expected to reach more than 1.2 billion this year. That’s a huge potential audience just waiting to discover your content, so if you haven’t already established a presence on TikTok, make sure you make 2021 the year when you do just that. Of course, it’s not as easy as rocking up, creating content, and suddenly growing a colossal following. Here’s how you can dominate TikTok in 2021.
Make sure your content engaging and fun
You’re nothing without great content when you’re on social media. You can have the most successful strategy in the world and know exactly how to pinpoint the right followers, but if you don’t have good content, they’re not going to stick around. That’s why you need to make sure your content is great. Consistently hit trends and know what’s happening in the world of TikTok. Edit your content with skill, communicate your personality in every video, and make liberal use of the Duet and Stitch features. By using TikTok’s toolkit, you can elevate your content above the average user’s.
Post at the correct times
It’s amazing just how effective posting TikTok content at the right times can be. Depending on which day of the week you’re posting on, users will be online at different times, so you’ll be reaching different numbers of people when you post. Mornings, evenings, and lunchtimes are all good points to aim for, but the best time to post differs based on which day of the week you’re looking at (for example, weekend times differ significantly from Monday, which also has a different peak time to Friday). Make sure you research this before you post!
Be consistent and create a posting schedule
Just as important as making sure you’re hitting the right times is posting consistently. TikTok rewards those who aim for regular, consistent schedules, so that users can reliably expect content and know when to check their feed. You don’t necessarily have to post every single day, although it’s certainly best to do so if you possibly can. Posting every two days or even every week is preferable to posting sporadically, because at least people will be able to check their calendar and know that there’s new content on the way. Still, daily is the best frequency to aim for.
Reach out to brands
Don’t wait for brands to come to you. There’s nothing wrong with putting feelers out and asking brands if they’re currently looking for ambassadors. Being proactive is critical to TikTok success; if brands see that you have that kind of attitude, they’ll want to work with you more, which will shore up your appeal to other brands in turn. Just remember to target brands that align with your particular aesthetic or sensibility, because otherwise your following will feel that you’re losing the authenticity that’s crucial to understanding TikTok as a platform.
Hit an underserved niche
TikTok is full of lots of different types of people with all kinds of backgrounds. If you want to dominate the platform, then it’s a good idea to try and target a niche that has been hitherto overlooked by the vast majority of influencers. For example, if you want to make content about video games, try not to just make videos about the same games everyone else is focusing on. Find a game with a big audience but not much content about it on TikTok and focus your attention there. You’ll have the gratitude of that community, and you’ll be able to organically build your follower and like counts.
Include lots of calls to action buttons
Whether it’s in the caption for your TikTok video or the content itself, you should be including calls to action in as much of your TikTok content as possible. This is because users respond favourably to these calls; questions and requests get a lot more attention than simply stating something. When people feel like they’re being encouraged to participate, they’re more likely to throw a like and a follow your way, which is, in the end, the key to dominating TikTok. Make sure you’re always thinking about what questions you can ask your followers.
Use other social media platforms too
Using multiple social media platforms will improve your presence and reach on all of the platforms you’re using. When you cross-promote your profiles on different platforms, you’re maximising your audience, thus ensuring that you’re posting to as many people as possible. You may have noticed that plenty of YouTube and Instagram content is just TikTok content reposted or edited into montages, and that’s not an accident. In fact, Instagram can be directly integrated with TikTok, so you can post directly to both platforms without any extra effort. We recommend doing this.
Be yourself and be natural
When you’re fake on TikTok, you’ll never make it, because the audience will find you out and know that you’re not being real. In any case, if you manage to ascend to the heights of TikTok stardom without being yourself, is it really worth being there at all? In all of your content – be that captions, videos, or anything else – you need to make sure you’re emphasising what makes you unique. After all, that’s your selling point; it’s what will draw brands to you, help define you on the platform, and bring you the followers and the likes you need to truly dominate.
