Launched in September of 2016, TikTok has since become one of the fastest growing social media platforms to date — as of March of 2024, it currently sits at over 1 billion active users per month.
Though the platform brought a new twist to the classic video format for social media, what’s not new is users’ interest in making the most of this lucrative channel. That means learning how to get more views on TikTok is imperative to “going viral” and building your digital presence or brand — for businesses and individual creators alike.
But, other than making content that is for your target audience, how else can you get more views on TikTok? Keep reading to learn a few tips and tricks from the experts at Rev, as well as how our captioning, subtitling, and transcription services can help you get more views on TikTok.
1. Create Content for Your Audience & Niche
At the end of the day, the end goal of learning how to get more views on TikTok is to promote growth for your profile, whether it be for a business or for yourself as an online creator. You may have heard versions of this tip before: if you’re looking to get more followers on TikTok, consistently creating content geared towards a specific audience is your key to success.
This content will look different depending on your specific niche, but most content across the Internet, not just on TikTok, falls into one of the following categories:
Entertaining
From dance trends, to challenges, to “day in the life” and “get ready with me”-style videos, this kind of content exists to provide audiences with something to watch, laugh at, and relate to.
Entertainment creators may refer to themselves as “vloggers,” “lifestyle creators,” or “entertainers,” and the biggest tip for getting more TikTok views for creators in this category is consistency, and quantity while maintaining quality.
Storytelling
When it comes to the question of getting more views on TikTok as a storyteller, the biggest considerations should be differentiation, engaging intros and content, and subject matter.
This is a prime example why choosing your niche is vital — oversaturated communities may make it difficult for content creators to differentiate themselves, but with unqiue editing styles, intros, and other video elements, creators can effectively stand out against the competition.
Educating or Informing
Educational content is often more formal than storytelling content, making it more appealing to users who view TikTok as an educational platform – and according to a study from Heriot Watt University, that’s 80% of users!
As for how to get more views on TikTok if you’re an educational or informative creator, we recommend focusing on continuing to be well-researched and informed, unbiased, and up-to-date with current events.
Selling or Brand-Building
It’s a well-known fact that products that gain attention from TikTok videos tend to quickly sell out, giving the companies that sell them a nice boost in business.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that the Internet, especially TikTok, moves fast. To create a consistent interest in your product or brand, we recommend showcasing multiple products in a rotation, working with influencers, staying up to date with trends, and investing in your packaging and branding.
2. Add Accurate Captions to Your Content
We know you’ve heard it before — captions are incredibly important to not only improve the accessibility of your content, but also increase average watch time (meaning more views), and even boost the indexability of content in Google. In fact, 75% of users watch video content with no sound, so videos without captions may be missing out on a large portion of their viewer base.
During the production phase of your content, you may (like many creators) opt to use TikTok’s auto-generated captions to lessen your workload and get your video out to the world faster.
Creators be warned — these captions are often littered with mistakes, especially when it comes to proper nouns like names and locations, as well as slang terminology and portmanteaus. TikTok users have also noticed that these automatic captions tend to “mishear” numerical values, often presenting them in an incorrect — albeit, sometimes comical — format.
When it comes to captioning your content, you don’t have to take the time to manually add your own captions, or spend hours editing the automatically-generated captions to align with your video’s audio. Rev offers human captioning services, as well as AI captioning services that outperform competitors when it comes to accuracy.
3. Add Relevant TikTok Hashtags to Your Videos
According to a recent study from ZDNET, 40% of American TikTok users leverage the social media platform as a search engine. You may be familiar with the search bar feature that TikTok has recently added, which allows users to gain additional context needed to understand videos, keep up with “tea”, or generally learn more about the topic at hand.
When you add hashtags to your videos, they are more likely to be found by users who are looking for videos about particular topics, people, places, and more.
4. Include Music and Viral Sounds
Just as dance routines, trends, and topics come and go quickly on TikTok, the same goes for sound clips. Users frequently jump on viral audios to reach new audiences and maintain a top-of-mind status.
Aside from individual users, major brands like Duolingo and Scrub Daddy have consistently created TikTok videos using trending audio clips, creating an organic following for themselves on the platform.
5. Add Foreign Subtitles
While English captions improve the watchability of video content for users who are Deaf, hard of hearing, or simply watching without sound, subtitles increase your reach even more by catering to non-English-speaking audiences.
And don’t worry – you don’t need to know someone who speaks Italian, Chinese, German, or Arabic to translate your video by hand. Rev has a team of experts who are able to turn around foreign subtitles for your TikTok content in as little as 48 hours.
6. Interact With Users Through Comments & Videos
One of the major differentiators of the TikTok platform versus more traditional social media is the level of interaction that’s available to creators and users alike.
From responding to comments in the comment section, pinning comments, or even creating brand-new videos using comments, TikTok makes it seamless for creators to connect with users. Keep in mind that this is also another avenue for creating relationships between yourself and your audience, which can help you get more followers on TikTok.
7. Cross-Promote Your TikTok Videos
It’s a running joke amongst younger generations that viral TikTok videos make their way onto other platforms long after they are initially posted on TikTok — sometimes this process can even take up to six months!
Following this trend, a major tip for how to get more views on TikTok is manually pushing your video content to other platforms like Instagram, X (formerly known as Twitter), YouTube, and others — this allows you to reach audiences multiple times, or encourage users to discover your TikTok profile from other forms of social media.
8. Focus On the First Few Seconds
Another commonly referenced phenomenon is the decreasing ability for users to focus on content for longer amounts of time. Research results show that the average human’s attention span has decreased from around two and a half minutes to around 45 seconds.
To account for the need to grab the attention of TikTok users, an important recommendation for how to get more views on TikTok is to focus on the first 5-10 seconds of your video.
9. Upload Consistently
TikTok’s algorithm, though mostly a mystery, has been shown to favor users who post consistently. The general pattern seems to be that more activity on your account leads to more recognition from the platform, meaning your videos are pushed out to the user base more frequently.
10. Collaborate With Niche-Relevant Creators
With so many flourishing communities on TikTok, it’s not difficult to seek out and find creators who create content about similar topics and participate in discussions in similar spaces to your niche.
Just like collaborations on YouTube and in traditional spaces like music can open up new pathways for larger audiences to discover you, the same goes for TikTok. If you’re looking for a tip on how to grow on TikTok, collaboration is a big step in the right direction.
Tips For Creating TikTok Content
Aside from investing in high-quality camera equipment, staying on top of quickly-changing trends, and focusing on catering to your audience, here are a few more tips to keep in mind when creating content for TikTok.
1. Transcribe Your Brainstorming Sessions
The goal of getting more views on TikTok should stay top-of-mind from the content ideation and planning process – many creators start with brainstorming sessions where ideas are tossed around, refined, and turned into concepts. This phase can be time-consuming, as you strive to develop fresh content, while remaining interesting to your target audience.
With the speed of ideas flying around, it can be difficult to keep track by taking physical notes – Rev recommends using a recording device (even your phone will do!), creating an audio recording of these sessions, and transcribing them for easier skimming when it comes time to actually pull out ideas.
If you’re looking to transcribe your video or audio materials yourself – know this. It’s been estimated that transcribing 1 hour of audio can take anywhere from 5 to 6 hours. Let a professional handle it, instead.
2. Plan Your Content Ahead of Time
Though organic, short, off-the-cuff skits can be more favorable for TikTok creators in the comedy space, many other creators may find it beneficial to create content plans and schedules for weeks, or even months, in advance.
This not only allows you to plan the elements of your video ahead of time (things like TikTok hashtags, finding the best times to post on TikTok, and looking into any audio clips or video trends you can follow).
3. Leave Room for Editing
As important as it is to post consistently, many TikTok creators — especially those looking to launch their brand or influencer career — can easily end up in a burnout spiral by not accounting for adequate editing time in their content schedules.
We know that being an influencer or content creator is an aspiration for many TikTok users, but we also want to remind you that creating quality content is one of the biggest keys to growing your following and getting more views on TikTok.
Ready to Get More Views on TikTok?
Looking to have your own viral video? By keeping in mind the above content categories and audiences, as well as incorporating a few of the handy tools we recommended, content creators and businesses are geared up and ready to do just that. Click below to see how Rev can help.
