10 proven strategies to grow your TikTok Followers
Here’s an in-depth look at 10 strategies to grow your TikTok followers.
1. Create high-quality, engaging content
This is the first strategy because it’s the most important. Above anything else, you must aim to create TikToks that are worth watching. You can use every other tip and trick in the book, but nothing beats TikToks that are high-quality and engaging.
Don’t worry — the advice here isn’t just “be good at TikTok.” Creating great TikToks takes more than just creativity, it’s also about understanding the platform, from defining your niche and target audience, to being your authentic self, to tracking trends.
Understand your niche and target audience
Your goal on TikTok isn’t to appeal to everyone. Rather, TikTok is an app that’s a mosaic of communities. Your first job is to identify what your niche is and target the audience that enjoys that content.
That could be:
- Cooking
- Makeup and skincare
- E-commerce
- Fitness
- Identity-based niches
- Pets and cute animals
The list truly goes on.
By finding a niche for your account and creating content for that particular audience, you’ll more easily find interested viewers. It’s also a good idea because TikTok’s algorithm identifies topics within a video and works to show them to viewers who are interested in that topic. By sticking to a niche, the algorithm will more easily find you viewers who like your content.
2. Optimize your TikTok profile
Your profile page is the first place you’ll establish your or your brand’s voice, so make it count.
Craft an attention-grabbing bio
TikTok bios are only 80 characters long, so every word counts. You want something short and snappy that captures your unique voice and also represents the type of content you create.
Aim to include some keywords that relate to your content, add a little humor, and perhaps an emoji or two. You can also add a call to action, such as “Follow me for daily recipes.” When people know what to expect from your account, they’ll be more likely to follow you.
3. Practice TikTok SEO
Search engine optimization has become increasingly important on TikTok as its search function becomes more sophisticated.
Use the right keywords
TikTok’s search is able to understand more than just hashtags. It’s able to scan every part of a TikTok, from the description to the subtitles, and use that information when a user initiates a search. Including keywords in your content is important for discoverability so that users searching for a particular content can find your account and become a new TikTok follower.
For example, here’s what we found when searching for “rescue farm animals.” The first result is this TikTok from The Gentle Barn. Notice the comprehensive caption that captures keywords like “rescued cows” and “animal sanctuary.”
Hashtags are another important part of search on the app and another way for new TikTok followers to find you. Brainstorm related hashtags when posting new content and aim to include at least three to five of them. Use a mix of trending and popular hashtags and more niche hashtags.
4. Collaborate with other TikTok creators
Another way to expand your reach and gain more TikTok followers is to team up with other creators.
Reach out to similar creators to collaborate
The first step is identifying creators that would make a good collaboration partner. There are two ways to approach this.
First, you can find creators within your own niche that produce similar content. For example, if you make beauty content, you could work with another beauty influencer to give each other makeovers, or play a game where you pick each other’s products for a look. The advantage here is that your audiences will be similar and likely to like content from both of you, giving you an avenue to attract new TikTok followers.
The other option is to find a creator who makes content that’s wildly different from yours. That will showcase your account to a brand new audience who probably aren’t going to see your account on their For You page and may not have otherwise become a new TikTok follower.
The best way to approach a collaboration opportunity is to message a creator on TikTok or from another one of their profile’s, like Instagram. Suggest a collaboration where you can both walk away with fresh content that attracts new viewers.
This can give you a follower boost when you’re first starting out, especially if the creator you partner with already has a lot of TikTok followers.
5. Engage with the TikTok community
It’s not enough to just passively post content on TikTok — you should be a full participant in the community by engaging actively with other people’s content and your fans.
Respond to comments and messages
Smart creators will take the time to respond to comments left on their TikToks, as well as DMs. Creating personal connections with your followers, even with something as simple as answering a question, forges a relationship and encourages viewers to become TikTok followers.
Something to keep in mind as your follower count grows: You can’t possibly respond to every comment or DM. Nor should you. Set boundaries for yourself – you’ll only respond to comments or an hour or so every day, you won’t engage with hateful comments or DMs, etc. Enforcing these boundaries is especially important with viral videos, extending your reach far beyond your normal audience.
Gaining new TikTok followers is all about making yourself more visible on the app. The For You page will do some of that for you, but another way is to regularly comment and like other creator’s content. Leaving comments on popular content, or content from similar creator’s, gives comment readers a way to find your account and become a new follower.
6. Leverage influencer marketing
Influencer marketing is a great avenue for brands on TikTok looking to reach new followers.
Identify influencers in your niche
The first step to working with influencers is to find creators that fit into your brand. While it may be tempting to simply try and work with the most popular creators, that’s not actually a good strategy. Niche influencers have more engaged audiences and if your brand matches that niche, their followers will be more likely to want your product or service.
Check out the hashtags associated with your niche and look for creators that have a high number of not only followers, but consistently high numbers of likes and comments. The goal here is for their TikTok followers to become yours as well.
7. Cross-promote on other social media platforms
TikTok likely isn’t the only social media platform you’re active on — you probably also have accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or other sites. Use that social media presence to your advantage to attract new TikTok followers.
Promote your TikTok profile on other platforms
If someone follows you on Facebook or Instagram, it’s a good bet that they’d also like to follow you on TikTok. Make sure to include a link to your TikTok profile anywhere you have a social media presence. The best way to do this is create a link-in-bio page using a tool like Link Tree or Later that contains all of your social media links. Include this link in your bio on platforms beyond TikTok so followers from anywhere can easily find your TikTok.
Here’s a LinkTree example from Reels and TikTok hair influencer Molly Katherine.
By putting her LinkTree in her IG bio, she can send Instagram followers over to her TikTok account.
Creating short videos on TikTok means you now have videos you can share across other social media platforms. TikToks are perfect for cross-posting as a YouTube Short, Instagram Reel, or Facebook video. You can either download your TikToks and post them natively on these platforms, or share a link or screenshot. Anywhere you have a social media presence, you can share your TikToks. That leads to new TikTok followers.
The reverse is also true – you can use TikTok to drive views to other platforms, too. This is especially useful if you create long-form YouTube videos. You can create short clips from using a YouTube to TikTok converter to promote your channel on TikTok. Use a call-to-action in your video caption, like, “Catch the rest of the video on my YT channel; link in bio!”
Encourage your existing audience to follow you on TikTok
A link-in-bio with a link to your TikTok is a great passive way to encourage new TikTok followers, but you can also be more direct. Routinely share your TikTok account link on places like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram Stories and explicitly encourage your followers to click and follow you.
8. Post consistent content with regularity
No one wants to follow a dead account, or an account that posts sporadically. TikTok users want to follow accounts they know will regularly post great content, so make sure you deliver that.
Establish a content schedule
Set yourself up for success by creating a content schedule for your TikTok account. TikTok itself recommends posting one to four times per day — that’s a lot! More realistically, if you’re just starting out, aim for a few times per week, like every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Challenge yourself to stick to this schedule and make it more frequent as you get more comfortable on the platform.
Experiment with video formats and lengths
Aiming for consistency doesn’t mean your content needs to be stale. Posting frequently gives you the opportunity to test out different types of TikToks as well as different lengths. One day you can try a 15-second skit, and another day you can try a two-minute explainer.
The advantage here is you can experiment with what types of content resonates with your own followers, and it keeps your feed fresh.
Analyze and adjust posting frequency
Once you have a library of content, you can dig into your TikTok analytics and see how each video performs. You may notice that posting at a particular time of day, or on a particular day of the week, leads to higher engagement, views, or new TikTok followers.
9. Analyze and optimize your TikTok performance
TikTok’s analytics tools can be found natively in the app, or you can use a third-party analytics tool. Whichever you use, these analytics provide invaluable information on your TikTok accounts performance. Optimizing your feed will help you reach new TikTok followers.
Utilize TikTok’s analytics tool to identify top-performing content
TikTok’s analytics tool contains a ton of useful information about content such as:
- Video views
- Your personal best time to post on TikTok
- Demographics of your TikTok followers
- Profile views
- Like
- Comments
This will let you know which of your videos most resonate with your TikTok followers. Use that information to keep creating content along those themes — whether that means participating in challenges, using trending audio, or covering a particular topic.
Buying TikTok followers will make this information far less useful because it won’t be accurate.
Understand your audience insights and demographics
The demographics section of your analytics reveals important information about your TikTok followers, such as their:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
Another reason not to buy TikTok followers is that this info will be useless if the accounts aren’t real.
Adjust your content strategy based on analytics
Put all this information together and you have some powerful insights into what type of content you should be creating. For example, if you create content about parenting and your TikTok followers tend to be women aged 25 to 34, you know you’re finding the right people and the right TikTok followers. Or, if participating in a hashtag challenge results in more engagements than other content, you know it’s a good strategy to continue doing those challenges.
Gaining TikTok followers correlates with views, like, and comments, so follow the data.
10. Stay up to date with TikTok trends and features
Finally, keep your TikTok account fresh and relevant by keeping up with what’s new on the platform.
Follow TikTok’s official updates and announcements
Keep on top of TikTok updates by following official channels, such as:
- TikTok’s newsroom
- Your country’s TikTok account on Twitter
- TikTok For Business announcements
Explore new video editing tools and effects
TikTok is constantly updating the app with new editing tools and effects. For example, in 2021, TikTok added Giphy animations and the ability to upload high-quality videos.
The effects gallery almost always has something fresh to play with, like trendy AI filters.
You can also try a TikTok video editor like Kapwing to create something unique. Just remember to keep all your text and overlays in the safe zone.
New TikTok followers come from creating great content
Why would you ever buy TikTok followers when there are so many other ways to gain followers organically?
Attracting new TikTok followers really comes down to gaining more exposure for your account, and that means creating consistent, high-quality content based on analytics. Before you’re tempted to buy TikTok followers, give these methods a try. It won’t happen overnight, but with time and persistence, you’ll be growing your account with real TikTok followers that genuinely love your content and your TikTok account.