How to Organically Grow Your TikTok Followers?

The moment TikTok absorbed Musical.ly the world became aware of the new social media sensation. Soon the app began to dominate most-downloaded charts and developed a user pool to match.

This gave rise to a new breed of influencers and empowered others to aspire to become social media movers and shakers. A few years later and there’s a pressing question.

Is it still possible to organically grow your TikTok followers?

The quick answer is yes and this article will tell you how.

In Pursuit of Organic Following

Keep in mind that these tips alone might not give you the influencer status you’re trying so desperately to reach. But they will definitely give you a good start and perhaps get you very close to social media fame. The rest is up to you.

1. Killer Profile

Your TikTok profile has to be concise yet super attractive. Come up with a snappy bio and briefly describe the content that you love to share/create.

And yes, hardly anybody cares about too much information. So you want to avoid revealing too much personal data. Just keep everything nice and simple.

One-liners, emoticons, and humor work. Remember that you only have milliseconds to catch somebody’s attention.

2. Taking Advantage of Trends

Trending hashtags can make your videos standing out, assuming that they’re relevant. In the beginning, you can totally base your content and sharing strategies on trends.

Just don’t forget about your audience.

Your goal is to tie trending hashtags with what you believe would please your target audience. In other words, make hashtags work for you and not the other way around.

3. Originality, Originality, Originality

Most TikTok users upload lip-synch videos and that’s okay. It’s just hard to reach influencer status from just lip-synching alone (maybe it’ll be different if you’re a cat or a fish).

Ideally, you want to make original videos out of some captivating song and dance. Don’t hesitate to find innovative ways of using TikTok’s built-in effects.

And since you’re in it to gain some serious traction, consider scripting all of your videos to contain a recognizable thread.

4. Soundtracks

The better your soundtrack, the likelier you are to attract a following. Again, you can make use of trending songs since TikTok has an agreement with most music labels and companies.

So, you can use copyrighted stuff and the magic happens if you know how to bend it in your own way. Cool choreography alone might not cut it as there are lots and lots of them.

5. Video Quality

By now it should be obvious that the TikTok community is quite demanding. They expect top-notch 15 to 60s entertainment. And many influencers spend a pretty penny to get the best equipment possible.

On the other hand, recording videos on your iPhone could work just fine. The key elements of video quality are light, camera settings, and effects/editing.

Think of it like this - if you were to become the Tarantino of TikTok, what would your videos look like?

6. Frequency and Engagement

You could be uploading every day, perhaps several times a day. Regardless, that’s not an excuse to sacrifice quality.

Find an uploading frequency that works for you and stick to it. When you start attracting larger audiences, they’ll expect you to upload at a certain time.

What’s in store for you are likes and comments. Make it a priority to respond to comments. Use your wits and don’t think twice about commenting on the videos of other aspiring influencers, which could be a good way to expand your reach.

7. Promotional Efforts

If you plan on organically building a TikTok following, other social media platforms can be of great help. Create and then share trailers of your TikTok videos on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.

It’s okay to do this even before you upload the clip to TikTok. It’s a way to generate hype and test your idea.

There’s a catch, though. Your audience on TikTok might not be the same as your audience on other social media channels. You can overcome this with a clear description of whom your promotional trailers target.

8. Collaborations

To make the most of TikTok collaborations, you may not want to punch far above your weight. Find like-minded TikTok creators who have roughly the same, or slightly higher, number of followers and work with them.

If you approach someone with a massive following, you’ll probably be wasting your time, to begin with. But as your following grows, so will the opportunities to enter into high-end collaborations.

In much the same way, if someone approaches you for a collaboration, you need to assess if it benefits your profile. It’s fine to say no if it doesn’t.

Third-Party Services

Apps and services that claim to be able to add to your following have attracted a lot of notoriety. Some of them smell like snake oil, but not all.

Some of the biggest brands and influencers are known to have used these services to boost their online presence.

You’ve just got to be strategic about the followers, likes, and views that you buy. Spread your profile-boosting efforts over a period of time and do it at a rate that makes sense.

Don’t think that the job is over when you hit 100K or 1M followers. You still have to keep uploading great content.

Watering the TikTok Seed

At the end of the day, what can grow your TikTok followers organically like no other is your creativity. This may sound like a cliche, but put yourself in the shoes of TikTok users, what catches your eyes when you scroll through your feed on TikTok?

How compelling do the videos have to be for you to hit the follow button?

If you know the answers and you can keep up the good work for long enough, followers will come pouring in. More likely than not.