It’s no secret if you’ve been following me on social media, you know how much my interest in Instagram is slowly deteriorating. Tiktok has completely replaced my online entertainment, education and connection time while doom-scrolling on my phone. So much, that I now find Instagram quite boring.
Nico and I have grown our off grid cabin account to 3500 followers in just over 3 months. I can’t claim to be a Tiktok creation expert, and especially not on how to monetize because we’re doing it for fun, and aren’t trying to make money from it (yet). Still, I have a lot to share on the topic, and a lot of you seemed interested when I polled about it on Instagram.
Let’s talk about why Tiktok works by design, the dark side of the algorithm, what it’s like to create on the app and some easy ways to get started.
The Tiktok algorithm
As all algorithms are nowadays, this one remains quite mysterious. Unlike instagram, which shows you content on a feed from accounts you follow, Tiktok is all about the “for you page” (also known as the “fyp”).
The fyp
The FYP becomes more and more attuned to you and your interests the more you use the app. When you first open the app, you might see some dancing videos or strange gen-Z humour. But slowly it will show you a wide variety of content, from resin art, to queertok, witchtok, spiritual tiktok, booktok, food + recipe inspiration, fashion, weird facts about animals, history lessons, to millennial strife tiktok. The more time you watch a particular video, the more it teaches the algorithm what you like. You dont need to like, comment on anything or follow anyone. It’s all about “watch time”.
Tiktok is known to even teach you things you didn’t know about yourself!
Nico’s fyp gives him rock climbing, construction tips, Quebec humour and the occasional penis joke.
My fyp gives me fashion, books, the unhinged Duo Lingo owl, Japanese food recipes and y2k nostalgia.
Our cabin account’s fyp gives us adventure, nature, animals, homesteading and other off-grid folks.
Raw + real content
The best content you’ll find on the app isn’t masterfully curated, it doesn’t have hours of editing behind it, it isn’t aesthetically pleasing or soothing to watch (though ASMR Tiktok is a thing).
The videos are raw + real. It feels like real people are creating real content.
It’s also packed with memes, making it light and fun. At first it might feel like you’re on the outside of an inside joke when you see Tiktok memes layered on to one another, and there can be many layers of nuance. But it doesn’t take long to “get it” (cue: the girls that get it, get it, the girls that don’t, don’t).
Our cabin instagram feed only shows me influencer posts, and professional photography by big machine accounts with 200k+ followers. On Tiktok, for every post from an influencer, I’ll see 10 posts from up and coming creators (like this woman posting about her chicken coup! I can’t get enough!!)
The dopamine hit: 15 seconds
We’re wired to get a hit of dopamine when we cross something off of our to-do list (like me finally writing this newsletter!), or when we finish a book, finish a series on Netflix, clean the last of our dishes. Tiktok works because it’s jam packed content into short videos that you can actually finish. In 15 seconds you could learn about the weird anatomy of humpback whales, or get a linguistics lesson on how a certain word came to be. There are videos that go up to 3 mins on the app but they often don’t perform as well as anything under 1 minute.
The point is: it’s satisfying.
Audio is important
Tiktok needs sound. You can’t have a good experience on the app without it. In this way it’s impossible to be scrolling on Tiktok without your full attention. You can be scrolling on IG and watching TV at the same time - but not Tiktok.
The comment section
Comments on Tiktok add whole other level to the app experience. A video might be great, but a top-liked comment can change the meaning of the video completely. It’s a process of co-creation with your audience.
You can’t DM someone on Tiktok unless you both follow each other, so the main way people interact with creators is by asking questions by commenting on their videos, which increases engagement, and makes interacting more accessible.
As a creator, what’s it like to use Tiktok? How does it work?
Creating on Tiktok teaches you to do a few things well:
synthesize your message
value imperfection + post frequently
find your niche and stick to it
1. Be brief
When I open up Instagram stories to rant about something, I can go on and on. Before I know it I’ll have recorded 4x 15 second stories (1 minute) and still not gotten to the point. The 15 second Tiktok limit forces me to really synthesize my message, remove the “ums” and “ahs”, and squeeze in as much valuable info as I can. It’s a great exercise and useful for marketing yourself anywhere and everywhere.
2. Be imperfect
Tiktok is all about quantity over quality. If you can crank out 3-7 videos per day, you’re on your way to success. My videos that had the most success were made in under 5 minutes with little thought or effort put into them. Users of Tiktok love feeling like you’re creating on a whim. Anything that feels too polished, professional or touched up usually goes unnoticed.
I’m serious about posting 3-7 times per day. If you post a couple of times per week and expect to grow a following, you won’t. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Nothing is ever lost, you can always re-post a video with the exact same message later on.
In fact, posting the exact same type of video every single day works really, really well. Look at this fashion blogger sharing her daily outfits in exactly the same style. I live for her videos!
Thneed Girl posts reaction videos with a simple head tilt and music from the Lorax to convey the utter uselessness of “thneedery” ie. articles of clothing that dont make much sense.
3. Be specific
Be super specific about who you are talking to on the app. I mentioned earlier that the app is eerily good at targeting you as a user, knowing your deepest desires and quirky interests. This is why we need more niche creators.
Your niche doesn’t have to be a person you serve; it could be a product you sell, a feeling you want others to feel, a hobby you have.
If you’re just copying trendy videos that try to appeal to anyone, you will be diluted in the millions of creators doing the same, and your content won’t get pushed out.
Remember to be unique + add value. Do voice-overs, teach something, add your input, critique something. If you are running a lifestyle account (like our cabin), you could also share a mood, a vibe that people will watch and think “YES THAT IS SO ME”. Foresee your viewers sharing it to their friends, why would they share it? “This video reminds me of you” “OMG we need to go here” “Have you seen this?”
It’s not all sunshine and roses
I can’t only speak highly of Tiktok. It is a very, very addictive app. The dopamine we get from finishing the videos leaves us wanting more. You can easily lose 2 hours scrolling once the algorithm has you figured out.
The high intensity of audio and video is not great for our mental health either, especially not if you are hypersensitive.
A downside of the extreme niche-ing is that there are some dark corners of Tiktok too. You can end up down a misinformation or hate rabbit hole if those are the types of videos you are interested in or looking for.
Niches tend to turn into echo chambers and you think the “whole world” is like the content you consume, when really you’re only experiencing a fragment of reality.
Sex workers are frequently silenced, banned and censored. Folks use code words like cornstar, peepee, seggs and le$bean to avoid getting shut down.
All in all, do I think Tiktok is for everyone?
No! It all depends on your marketing goals.
As a business owner, Tiktok will allow you to reach a very large niche audience from all over the world. If your business is slow-paced, individual and one-on-one, you might prefer to cultivate individual relationships with people to build your business, this isn’t the best space to do that because you will quickly be overwhelmed by the comments and likes from thousands of users. Instagram might just be the way for you to have those deeper connections via DM. If you want to grow fast, and scale your business, then by all means get your butt to Tiktok.
As a user, know that though Tiktok can be validating in finding your community who likes the same weird things that you do, it’s extremely addictive. Tiktok is overstimulating and can be jarring to your mental health. Take it in in small doses. Put a time limit on your phone to limit scrolling, set times of the day when it’s off limits.
If you want to get started here’s what I recommend:
Follow Jera Bean for Tiktok tips + tutorials (or other creators who teach you how to do it - there are literally thousands of them posting about trends every day!)
Learn the app as a user before you start creating. What works on IG doesn’t work on Tiktok and vice versa.
Be brief, be consistent, be imperfect, don’t think twice: just POST.