How To Get More Followers On TikTok In 2024 (Beginner’s Guide)
Are you having trouble finding your stride on TikTok and earning followers?
TikTok is one of the fastest-moving social media platforms on the web. The app seems to cycle through trends like crazy, so crazy that it can be hard to keep up with at times, especially if you’re a creator trying to make it on the platform.
In this post, you’ll discover the best methods you can use to increase your TikTok presence and grow your following on the platform.
How to get more followers on TikTok
1. Post more TikTok content
As obvious as this method may be, it’s often overlooked by TikTok creators even if it makes a lot of sense.
TikTok’s algorithm works the same as any other social media algorithm out there: it’s designed to keep you engaged with the app for as long as possible.
Tiktok does this with short-form content and the “For You” page, the page TikTok users scroll through to find new content from creators they may or may not be following.
To keep users engaged, TikTok inserts relevant content on a user’s For You page based on TikTok videos they’ve watched or liked in the past.
When a user likes a TikTok (or a few) by a specific creator and watches it all the way through, they’re more likely to insert other videos from that creator on the For You page.
Therefore, if you increase your output, you’re giving TikTok more videos to recommend to users who like your content.
Related Reading: The Best Time To Post On TikTok (According To Data).
Managing your TikTok upload schedule
While creating content isn’t easy and you’ll need to work even harder to create videos if you want to increase your output, you can make things a lot easier for yourself when you post videos in advance with a TikTok marketing tool.
A scheduling tool like Pallyy works great for this.
You can use it to schedule videos in advance for TikTok, and other social networks.
The tool even lets you add captions and hashtags in advance.
If you work with a team, you and your other members can discuss content you upload to Pallyy.
2. Publish engaging content
This method isn’t as straightforward as simply adding more content to your upload schedule, but it’s still one of the most effective ways to ensure you gain followers when TikTok users come across your videos.
When you create videos, make them as engaging as possible.
Find an engaging style that works for your content and personality.
1. Energetic presentation with a loud and clear speaking tone:
2. Soft-spoken presentation designed to relax viewers:
3. No-voice presentation that uses raw audio or TikTok sounds and focuses on actions:
Of course, you can always mix and match or use all three.
When you’re brainstorming ideas, try to focus on topics you feel would interest your viewers the most.
Here are a few topic ideas:
- Demonstrate a process.
- Make vlog-style TikToks of your daily life or daily work life.
- Record a video about a mistake in the moment.
- Discuss current events in your niche while you do other things in the video.
- “Story times.” Narrate a personal story while you do other things in the video.
3. Hone in on your target audience
There are two versions of your audience you need to create content for: the audience you’re intending to reach and the audience you actually reach.
Creating content for the first version of your audience is simple enough. All you need to do is pick a niche or central focus for your videos and stick with it.
Creating content for the other version of your audience is a little harder.
First, find out who your audience is.
You can do this with TikTok Analytics, a feature available to accounts that have published at least one public video.
Just log into your TikTok account, go to your profile, click the menu button at the top-right corner of the page, select Creator Tools, then click Analytics.
You can also use dedicated TikTok analytics tools.
Your analytics show you how many views, likes, comments and shares your TikTok videos have received over the last seven, 28 or 60 days. You can also select a custom date range.
More importantly, it breaks your audience down into the following categories:
- Gender – Percentage of male vs female followers.
- Age – Percentage of followers in each age group:
- 18-24
- 25-34
- 35-44
- 45-54
- 55+
- Top Countries – List of the top countries where your followers are located with percentages for each.
- Top Cities – Same as Top Countries but for cities.
One of the most important metrics TikTok collects from your followers is the Most Active Times metric.
This metric showcases the exact days of the week and exact times of the day your audience is most active on TikTok.
It’s best to match your upload schedule with these times as your audience will be more likely to catch your latest videos.
Overall, once you view these metrics, you’ll know exactly who to create content for in your niche.
4. Duet or stitch other users’ videos
Along with scrolling up to view new content, the duet and stitch features on TikTok are part of what make the platform so unique.
Duets are TikToks where one TikTok user creates a side-by-side video with another TikTok creator’s video.
Any TikTok user can create duets.
They’re typically used to react to another user’s video, but as you can see from the example above, some creators use duets to add a comedic tone to a video that wasn’t originally meant to be funny.
Stitches are videos TikTok creators create by splicing their videos with other creators’ videos.
These ones are typically used for reaction purposes, such as in the example embedded above where Kyd Mike lets Merrick Hanna’s video play first before he “stitches” it with his own.
Typically, experts or authoritative figures in specific niches will use stitches to provide an informative opinion on individual videos.
Others simply use them for comedic purposes.
Do some research on your niche (try searching for relevant hashtags, for one), and be on the lookout for videos you can create engaging duets or stitches with.
These videos may very well receive more engagements than videos you make solo.
Plus, if you duet or stitch a video from a creator who has a larger audience than you and they duet or stitch your video back, you’ll get your content introduced to an entirely new audience and may gain more TikTok followers.
You may even develop a rapport with another creator as Jonny and Dina have:
5. Collaborate with other TikTok creators
This method’s a little more involved than simply dueting or stitching another creator’s video, but it could prove to be a lot more effective for you as far as gaining more TikTok followers goes.
Whereas anyone can duet or stitch another creator’s videos, collaborations on TikTok are videos you plan out and even record with another creator.
Creators who collaborate with one another typically release different videos for each creators’ accounts rather than releasing the same videos on both accounts.
This incentivises each creators’ followers to view the other creator’s page so they get a chance to view all videos published throughout the collaboration.
Like duets and stitches, collaborations introduce your content to a new audience, which can quickly turn into more views and follows for your page.
While you research potential videos to duet or stitch, be on the lookout for creators you feel would make good collaborative partners, and reach out to them on TikTok or Instagram.
You don’t necessarily need to stick to your own niche, either. Look for creators in adjacent niches or creators you feel would complement your content.
For example, if you’re a photographer, offer to collaborate with another TikTok creator on a photoshoot, then upload clips of the collaboration to TikTok and the images to Instagram.
6. Publish challenge videos
TikTok challenges come in all shapes and sizes.
While some are dangerous or incredibly difficult, others are perfectly wholesome and easy to attempt.
It’s best to choose challenges that are currently trending.
Browse TikTok, and be on the lookout for challenges you can tackle, even if they don’t seem like challenges.
Trending dances or food hacks may not seem like challenges, but they’re still trending topics you can attempt on your own page.
You can also create your own challenge, then publish your own video of you attempting it or accomplishing it.
Attempting a challenge in one TikTok per day may even be a decent way for you to get more TikTok followers as users will want to see your next few attempts on their For You page.
The best way to get the algorithm to do that is by following you.
7. Host a contest or giveaway from your TikTok profile
Hosting contests or giveaways is a classic way to gain more followers on social media, and you can do it on TikTok as well.
You can make your contests as easy or difficult to enter as you want when you use a tool like SweepWidget.
This is a social media contest tool you can use on almost any website, though they do have dedicated WordPress and Shopify plugins.
The tool is compatible with numerous social media platforms. For TikTok, you can require participants to use the following entry methods:
- Visit a specific TikTok page.
- Follow a specific TikTok page.
- Watch a specific TikTok.
- Like a specific TikTok.
- Comment on a specific TikTok.
- Share a specific TikTok.
As you can see, not only will this tool help you get more followers, it will also bring traffic and engagements to a specific video.
As such, it’s a great way to use a social media contest to market your TikTok page.
What types of contests or giveaways should you host?
This is the difficult part: deciding what product or service to giveaway.
If you develop your own products, use this tool to market it.
Offer it as a prize, and create a TikTok advertising it.
Then, make that the TikTok participants need to interact with in order to enter the contest.
If you don’t make your own products, see if any brands in your niche want to partner on a giveaway.
If not, you’ll need to identify a trending product in your niche to giveaway, then foot the bill for it on your own.
8. Delay cross posting to other social media platforms
Everyone who uses TikTok doesn’t necessarily use other social media platforms. Everyone who uses Instagram doesn’t necessarily use other social media platforms. Everyone who uses YouTube doesn’t necessarily use other social media platforms, and so on and so forth.
As such, many creators cross post their TikTok content to multiple social media platforms, including Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts.
However, if you publish content originally meant to be a TikTok to other social media platforms at the same time you publish them to TikTok, you’re giving viewers from other social media platforms no reason to find you on TikTok.
To combat this, delay posting TikToks to other social media platforms by a week or more.
You can even add an end card to each video that says “Find my latest videos on TikTok (@username)” or “Video originally posted to TikTok (@username)” or “New videos posted to TikTok daily (@username)”.
If users like your videos enough, they’ll find you on TikTok to view your latest content.
Sendible – an easy way to delay cross posting
If you use a social media management tool like Sendible, not only can you manage your TikTok publishing schedule, you can also use it to schedule Instagram Reels and YouTube videos (among other types of social media posts for various platforms).
So, when you create a new video on June 10 that you want to publish to TikTok on June 20, you can use Sendible to schedule it.
Then, schedule a version of that TikTok as an Instagram Reel and YouTube Short for June 27.
This is how easy a decent social media management tool like Sendible can make managing a cross posting schedule.
9. Use trending sounds
Like we said, TikTok has quite a few unique features you won’t find on other social media platforms, including the sounds feature.
This feature allows you to easily set a TikTok video to (almost) any song you like.
Sometimes other creators publish audio from their own videos as sounds so other TikTokers can use them as audio for their own videos. This is typically used for comedic purposes.
Users can even browse an individual sound to view the top videos that use them.
This is why using trending sounds is so important for growth. It increases your chance of appearing on these types of lists.
When you create a new TikTok, click the Add Sound button located at the top of the editor, then browse the For You section to view trending sounds.
Swipe left to view more.
You can also scroll through your For You page for an hour or so and make note of sounds you hear more than once. That’ll give you another indicator of what sounds are currently trending as well as examples of how particular sounds are being used.
Then, simply create your own videos set to these sounds.
10. Use hashtags
Yep, hashtags have made their way over to TikTok.
You can use them in captions and search for them to find trending videos in particular niches.
There are three types of hashtags you can add to your captions:
- Trending hashtags
- Niche hashtags
- Branded hashtags
Use the first two in your captions at the very least. That is, use one trending hashtag and a few niche hashtags.
Use a tool like TikTok Hashtags to find the least competitive niche hashtags pretty easily.
For trending hashtags, view the search bar in the TikTok app to view trending topics, or use TikTok’s Trend Discovery tool to find trending hashtags from the last seven days in specific categories.
Use three to five hashtags in total. Using too many hashtags in your captions looks spammy, and you don’t want to use too many irrelevant hashtags.
Stick to niche hashtags for the most part, and try to choose ones that don’t have many videos posted to them to increase your chances of going viral under a particular hashtag.
When you create a video series or a challenge, come up with a catchy, on-brand hashtag to use for it.
Then, add that hashtag to the caption of every video in the series.
The algorithm will catch on to this and insert these videos on relevant For You pages more and more, which will increase your chances of gaining more followers.
Should you use #fyp?
You may have seen the TikTok hashtags #fyp or #foryoupage in quite a few videos.
This is due to the belief of these hashtags increasing your chances of appearing on the For You page.
Unfortunately, there’s zero evidence to support these claims.
Even worse, overuse has made these hashtags extremely competitive, so it doesn’t really make sense to use them these days.
11. Inspire user-generated content
When you create your own TikTok challenge, you may end up inspiring what’s known as user-generated content.
This is content created by other TikTok creators that’s inspired by content you’ve created.
You can even create a branded hashtag to use for your challenge in hopes of other creators using it when they upload their own attempts.
Another way you may unintentionally inspire user-generated content is through original sounds from your videos.
This happens when creative TikTok users create their own original content using audio (TikTok “sound”) from your video.
When they do, users will be able to click on the sound and view where the sound originates from: your video.
Another way you can inspire user-generated content is by requesting duets from other TikTok users.
You can do this with singing challenges, acting challenges, quizzes you create, “pronounce this word” challenges and more.
If you’re a brand, sponsor relevant TikTok creators in your niche, and have them create user-generated content with your products.
12. Watch TikTok
This final method is obvious, but it’s often overlooked by brands and marketing “professionals” who simply read tutorials like these to learn more about a platform.
In reality, the best place to learn more about TikTok is TikTok.
Browse the For You page for an hour or two, like videos you like, favorite videos you love, and comment on a few.
The algorithm will pick up on the type of content you like and will start recommending more and more relevant videos to you.
Even when you get the hang of the platform, you should still browse it to keep up on the latest trends and to find relevant creators you can potentially collaborate with.
Final thoughts
Let’s discuss a few bonus tips, especially whether or not you should use tools to increase your following on TikTok artificially.
TikTok growth tools are risky to use, for one.
While TikTok doesn’t currently have a policy in place that forbids buying followers, you don’t want to find yourself in the crosshairs should they ever enforce such a rule.
Even if you use a tool that offers free TikTok followers, all you’re doing is increasing the number of followers you have.
These tools don’t increase your engagement nor do they help you grow a real following of fans who want to view and share your latest content and even buy your products.
Free followers are out there, but you should stick to legitimate methods to obtain them.
The last tip we’ll mention are TikTok ads.
The reason we didn’t mention this method in the main section of the article is simple: users tend to ignore ads in favor of organic content.
Even so, you should still experiment with TikTok’s Promote tool to see if it affects your follower count.
Finally, if you want to learn how to get more followers on other networks, check out our guides covering:
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