Publishing, Descriptions, & Hashtags

Once I’m done editing the videos on my laptop, I’ll send them to my phone and turn them into drafts within TikTok.

The only changes I make within the TikTok editor is to add captions so people can read what I’m saying (I suspect many people watch TikTok on silent, so captions help), and I add a text hook to the... See more

High-Level Categories: What’s Working for Your Inspiration

The easiest way to come up with those ideas is to look through those five to ten accounts you liked and then see what topics of theirs have performed the best. Don’t copy what they say. But if a certain topic did well for one of them, especially if it did for multiple, your take on that... See more

The most important part of editing is getting your video as tight as possible. Attention spans are short on TikTok, so you have to be willing to cut the video to make it as good and concise as possible. And make sure the first 2-3 seconds immediately hooks people. That’s how long you get before they scroll to the next video.

Bundling and Unbundling

Listicle-style videos tend to do well on TikTok, so think about how individual topics can be bundled into listicle videos, or listicle series, and how listicle videos can be unbundled into a number of individual videos.

For example, let’s say you have 20 different video ideas on “common beginner mistakes.” Could you do a... See more

How Long Until I Go Viral?

Depends on how good your videos are. I posted my first video of this experiment on 12/16, and the first video that did really well was on 12/23. So it took me a week.

That said, I see many others on TikTok posting for months and never having a video do well.

In almost every case, my guess for why they aren’t succeeding is... See more

You and the Algorithm

Doing well on TikTok seems to come down to two main things:

1. Figuring out what the algorithm likes for your niche to get in front of viewers


2. Figuring out what those viewers like so they want to follow you

Some people just focus on #1 and get millions of views with a very low follower conversion. Others do great on #2 and have a... See more

I find editing easiest if I just record one long video for each topic, including the pauses and mistakes, and then chop it up later.

Scripting

If scripts will help you, do your scripting the day before recording. I usually script out my videos using high-level bullet points that I want to hit on, then let it flow a little more naturally for actual... See more

Finding Your Niche

You want people to eventually be interested in you for you, to “be the niche,” but you’ll need to start with some focused topic to get picked up by the algorithm.

Finding the right niche on TikTok is a combination of:

1. What topic do you have a meaningful competitive information advantage in?


2. What topic are people already following?

... See more

Choosing a Style

Once you know what topic you’re going to cover, you need to find a style that’s working that fits you.

Don’t just do whatever you want here, and don’t just copy over what style has worked on YouTube or Instagram. TikTok has a vibe you want to tap into, and if you don’t do that you’ll have a hard time getting picked up by the... See more