TikTok has been THE record-beating social network for several years, and has seen the emergence of many stars influencers who rack up millions both in terms of views and revenue. Do you want to get involved as well? It’s certainly still possible to make a name for yourself on the Chinese social network. Influence4You tells you all you need to know on how to become a TikTok influencer.
What are you specialised in and what is your target audience?
Are you an expert in a particular field? Or passionate about a sector? For example, perhaps you are passionate about cooking and want to create content to share recipes and tips to a community you’ll create. Cooking recipes and other food-related videos are a big hit on TikTok. Indeed, young chef Eitan Bernath has over 2.2 million subscribers. He shares his recipes to catchy music. His deep fried mozzarella sticks recipe has attracted over 2.1 million views! Proof that cooking is really trending on the social network! Don’t know how to cook? No worries! You can also just share your daily life, or make dance videos. Don’t forget that music is key on TikTok!
Who are the competition and what do they do?
Once you have an idea of the niche you want to focus on, don’t hesitate to carry out an analysis, even a quick one, of what influencers in the sector are doing. Which videos are the most successful? Do they have a high engagement rate? Who do they follow? This will give you a broader idea of what works. Don’t hesitate to message them, you might not get an answer but it’s always worth a try.
Are you OK with criticism?
Unfortunately, the more exposure you get on TikTok, the more criticism you will receive. This is part of being an influencer even if they very often speak out against it. Do you want to share everything about your life, or do you want to keep some of it to yourself to prevent people judging? You can decide to be yourself on TikTok or create a persona. In this case, it allows you to have a sort of protective barrier. “It’s not me who is being criticised, but my persona” can be your mantra, preventing you from being hurt in the event of harsh criticism.
Putting it into practice
Great, let’s get to work and develop a plan for success and becoming a recognised influencer on TikTok. Influence4You shares the best practices in the sector.
Learn!
No one is born an influencer and there is still no formal education available in influencing. Even less on TikTok, so don’t hesitate to take matters into your own hands! You can find a lot of great tutorials on the secrets of TikTok on YouTube, for example. Influence4You also shares many articles in the field that can help you.
There is no need to spend a fortune on training, there is quality content available for free on the net.
Work on your content
To attract people to your profile and encourage them to follow you, you’ll need to have quality videos. How do you go about this? There’s no need to invest in the latest phone, a phone with a good camera will do. Perfect your videos and lighting. You can invest in a ring light for a 20–30 dollars. You may want to do this later as it is by no means the key to success.
You can use applications like Canva to make professional-looking videos without too much difficulty. The app offers unique backgrounds for TikTok.
Be original and follow the latest trends
In the “For You” tab, it is quite easy to see the videos promoted by TikTok’s algorithm: most of them are between 10 and 20 seconds and feature the latest hits. These videos also have between 1 and 3 hashtags in their description, often the most trending ones. If you need help figuring out the best hashtags to use, check out our article ‘The Best TikTok Hashtags in 2022 By Category’. Don’t reuse your YouTube videos or other media on TikTok as the format and audience are not suitable!
Keep in mind that everything moves quickly on TikTok. Although the algorithm is not public, many experts believe that when videos are first uploaded, they are presented to a small group of users. If this group likes the video, it grows until it reaches millions! And it doesn’t matter how many followers you have. This means that you have a shot at getting thousands of views on your video if it is well done and brings value. Pay particular attention to the first few seconds to hook the viewer!
Take part in TikTok challenges
To increase your visibility on TikTok it is important to join the community and follow the codes of the social network. There are many trending challenges every week: don’t hesitate to find them and if they fit your branding, try them out. This allows you to be easily found using the challenge hashtags. Check out our article “10 Trending TikTok Challenges in 2022“.
Plan your content
You don’t need to plan ahead several months. But you could, for example, make a list of the topics you want to cover and schedule them on a weekly basis. This allows you to have an overview of your content. You can then adapt it if you get feedback from users, and choose to include other topics if there are challenges you want to participate in, for example.
There are many tools to make life easier for influencers. Influence4You recently shared 10 tools for influencers.
To sum up
Becoming a TikTok influencer is not about patience and perseverance like on Instagram. It’s more focused on creativity and inventiveness. Have fun, learn from the platform and from others, post a lot, dance, and even sing! And you may find success like many others. You’ll then be able to monetise your account. Our article 10 Ways to Make Money on TikTok covers this.
If you want to be put in touch with brands for partnerships and campaigns, don’t hesitate to sign up to the Influence4You platform!
