Did I just achieve every teenage girl in a crop top’s dream by getting a viral TikTok video with a million views? Yep. I didn’t wear a crop top or even dance though. Here’s how I did it.
I’ve actually had several videos “go viral” by TikTok standards. A video is considered to have gone viral if it gets significantly more views than what your videos typically do. Right now, I have 5K followers and a typical non-viral video of mine gets between 2 and 3 thousand views. My viral videos do have a few things in common though.
Captivating Content
You want people to stop and view your video, preferably more than once. So, you want something that will catch their eye initially and stop them from scrolling. Then you want to keep their attention. You can do this using text, humor, or a specific song, or following a trend.
Text is a great way to make your content captivating because people actually have to stop to read it. Making text appear throughout your video is a fun way to keep your viewers watching. Just make sure you leave time for them to read it. The text flashing on and off the screen with no time to read can be annoying and make people keep scrolling.
My viral video asked the question “Does anyone else do this?” That kept people watching to see what I was going to do, and also encouraged engagement. A lot of people commented saying they do the same thing.
@madison_loethenDoes anyone else do this? ##fyp ##foryoupage ##babiesoftiktok ##momsoftiktok ##momlife ##momrapchallenge ##stayhomestaystrong ##loungewear ##keepingbusy
It’s best to keep your videos short. Shoot for 15 seconds or less. Any longer than that, you may lose your audience, and they definitely won’t watch the video more than once. The algorithm rewards videos that are watched multiple times from start to finish.
You also want your content to be high quality or people may not stop and watch. Consider shooting in front of a window or using a ring light. An iPhone tripod may also be a good investment. There are even iPhone tripods that have ring lights built-in.
Stick To A Niche
TikTok isn’t all teenage girls dancing in bikinis in front of pools, although there is still plenty of that. It has all sorts of niches that include cooking, DIY, humor, pranks, motherhood, and more. If you stick to a niche, you create a loyal audience who will not only follow you, but also engage with your content.
I picked the motherhood niche and a lot of my followers are also parents with young children. They often comment on my videos with their experiences. The more engagement your videos get, the more likely they are to go viral.
Hashtags
You have to utilize hashtags to target who you want to see your video. I often use the hashtags #momsoftiktok or #babiesoftiktok because the people who like videos with those hashtags will probably like my videos too. You use hashtags to tell the TikTok algorithm who to show your video to. You want to use hashtags that are relevant to your video because you want the people TikTok shows your video to to actually watch it and engage with it. If the people TikTok initially shows your video to aren’t interested, your video will probably flop.
You will see the option of using trending hashtags when you go to add hashtags to your description box. The trending hashtags have a red fire sign next to them. I would suggest using one of these if it pertains to the video at least a bit. The trending hashtags are what a lot of people are viewing at the moment and using them could get you a lot of initial views.
Pretty much everyone on TikTok has noticed the TikTok algorithm can be finicky and unexplainable. You may think your video is going to be gold and then it hardly gets any views. It’s happened to all of us. Just hang in there and keep creating content. Very likely, you’ll make a video that rides the viral wave. Also, don’t delete videos that don’t do well initially. They can take off as long as weeks later. I had one video that I posted not do well for two weeks, and then all of the sudden it had 30K views.
Best of luck, and happy TikToking!
