Ultimate Guide: How to Make Your Brand Go Viral on TikTok in 2021
By: John Harned
Tags: Social Media Marketing, Social Media Strategy, Viral, Tiktok App, Growth Hacking

Have you noticed how difficult organic growth has become on social media these days?

Once upon a time, you could post something on Facebook or Twitter and pretty much guarantee that at least your followers would see it. But nowadays it seems like your only hope of getting seen is to pay to promote it.

You can spend days on the perfect content strategy, then create and fine-tune each post for hours, only to publish it and hear crickets: a few likes, maybe a comment, and a click-through rate of exactly zero.

It’s almost enough to make a grown marketer cry.

But what if there was another way?

What if you could predict exactly how to make a post perform well? What if, in fact, you could make posts that go viral — on purpose?

Imagine hundreds, even thousands, of new prospects discovering your business and joining your mailing list, all because just one short, simple video went viral. And now imagine being able to repeat that success at will, hacking virality over and over again, each time predicting with near-perfect accuracy how people will respond.

Sound impossible? It’s not. Not if you know how to go viral on TikTok, that is.

Viral marketing is fascinating, but as a practical strategy it has its limits. No one can truly explain how to go viral — at the end of the day, you’re still at the mercy of whatever algorithm runs the platform you’re using.

But would you believe that on TikTok, the algorithm is actually in your favor?

Whether or not you believe it now, you’re about to learn exactly how to go viral on TikTok. Grab a pen and paper, because you might need to take notes. You won’t want to miss any of this.

The TikTok Opportunity: Should I use TikTok for my business?

Before you learn how to go viral on TikTok, you need to be sure it’s a good idea. Your time is money, after all. But if you’ve done any research on TikTok already (and even if you haven’t), you’ve probably met with mixed opinions.

On one hand, people make fun of TikTok as a barren corner of the internet, where unsupervised children create regrets they’ll rediscover as adults. But on the other hand, some marketers and social media experts see TikTok as a unique opportunity for brands.

Which is true?

The TikTok opportunity is definitely real, but whether your business should use it depends on your audience and goals.

Should businesses be on TikTok?

If your brand targets a younger audience (under 30) or you want to begin attracting young people, then TikTok is an obvious place to be. And if your brand has public spokespeople as the face of your company, or if it uses video already for YouTube or Instagram, then getting started on TikTok should be easy for you.

TikTok is possibly the best platform out there for reaching audiences in a personal way. But if you primarily target an older audience, or if you have to maintain a serious, untouchable brand image, then your efforts might be better spent elsewhere.

Even if you have little experience making videos or you target an older audience, TikTok is such an easy platform for organic growth that it might be worth it to build a following there, anyway. It’s not just for kids anymore — older generations are quickly finding their way onto TikTok as well, and for now there’s not much content targeting them. As long as you can represent your brand faithfully, the TikTok opportunity is one that every business should seriously consider.

Why you should use TikTok:

It’s easy to get discovered and build a following on TikTok, even if you’re a no-name brand with little experience.

Expectations are low on TikTok, which means you don’t have to spend much time or money on videos. Often, the simpler a video, the better.

TikTok encourages people to connect in a personal, authentic way. That may feel unfamiliar to cold and calculating marketing departments, but it’s where marketing in general is headed: simplicity and sincere, human connections.

TikTok is still relatively new, so it isn’t over-saturated with brands competing for attention (yet). People using TikTok today will have a good chance of dominating it in the future.

From making videos to engaging with your audience, using TikTok is simple — much simpler than YouTube or Instagram. Even knowing how to go viral on TikTok is simple, as you’ll soon see.

How to use TikTok for marketing

It’s easy to see why TikTok would appeal to energetic teens and would-be influencers, but how is it relevant to business?

Except for short-lived platforms like Vine, nothing like TikTok has ever existed before. Until now, the major social networks always rewarded the most expensive, highest-quality content. Simple, poorly made videos would occasionally go viral, but not usually in a way that reflected well on the people who made them.

On TikTok, quality is still important, but it’s a different kind of quality: instead of expensive equipment and polished editing, the content that performs well on TikTok is intimate, engaging, and story-driven.

On TikTok, videos are limited to one minute long (although this will be expanded to three minutes sometime in 2021). Creators only have that much time to make an impact before viewers move on with their day. As a result, videos that are fast-paced, visually engaging, and simple typically perform the best. Often these take the form of short stories, recipes, pranks, and simple sketches that get to the punchline quickly.

Although you can pump out various videos like these and get views, they’re only part of the equation. To build an audience, you need a recognizable personality behind your content. For businesses, this might mean assigning a handful of employees to be the face of their brand on TikTok.

Having brand representatives on social media has always been effective, but it’s even more important on TikTok. To use TikTok successfully as a marketer, consider putting a person or team in charge of making videos. They should be the recurring “characters” in your brand’s story. This isn’t just how to go viral on TikTok, but how to succeed there long-term.

How to go viral on TikTok with no followers

People often ask whether you can get noticed or go viral on TikTok when you don’t have any followers yet. After all, on platforms like YouTube, you have to build your audience slowly over time before the algorithm starts pushing your content. Even then, going viral on purpose is difficult, and the results are often disappointing.

Not so on TikTok. Instead of prioritizing established creators over new ones, TikTok judges each video on its own merit, giving everyone a chance to go viral. This applies to brand-new creators with no followers, just as it does to more experienced users. While there’s no guarantee that your first few videos will go viral, you’ll at least get a fair chance to see how people respond to them. As you learn how to go viral on TikTok through direct experience, your odds of making it big will increase.

As you’re about to see, this is far easier than most people would expect. In fact, you can go viral on TikTok in just three simple steps.

How to go viral on TikTok in 3 easy steps

As a digital marketer, you probably aren’t used to things being simple. Learning how to make a successful PPC campaign can take years, and SEO can easily mystify beginners.

But once again, TikTok is a remarkable exception.

Going viral, building a loyal fan base, and dominating TikTok is as simple as doing these three things consistently:

1. Get TikTok to show your video to the right people

When a new video is published, TikTok tries to establish whether they have an audience for that video, and how many of them are online at the time of uploading. By uploading new videos frequently at peak times throughout the day, you increase your chances of being seen by more people. And by using hashtags and keywords that are relevant to your target audience, you can ensure that the first people to see your video will understand and appreciate it.

2. Get people to watch your video to the end

Getting your video seen is just half the battle. Next you have to make sure those people stick around until the end, because video watch time is the primary metric TikTok uses to gauge a video’s success. You can maximize watch time with a simple three-part structure consisting of a hook, buildup, and payoff.

3. Get people to click the “follow” button after watching your video

Once people are consistently watching your entire video (or at least enough of it to impress TikTok) you probably have a viral hit on your hands. But to capitalize on that virality, you need people to follow your account before they leave. A compelling call-to-action at the end of your videos can ensure that people who enjoy your content become loyal fans.

Would you have believed it could be so simple?

With this new knowledge, you’re probably eager to record some videos and start dominating your niche on TikTok. Let’s start by showing TikTok’s algorithm who your content is for.

Step 1: How to make TikTok show your videos to the right people

Although TikTok seems to give every new video a chance at virality, your odds of going viral will be much higher when you apply these practices.

Choose a niche or trend

Since you’re marketing a business, chances are your niche has already been chosen for you. Whether you’re a local lawn care service or a small tech startup, your primary niche is whatever field you provide services in.

Just because you know your niche doesn’t mean you know how to use it to go viral. But that’s where the fun begins, because TikTok is such a flexible platform that just about anything can end up a success. That doesn’t mean every video that gets uploaded goes viral — far from it — it only means that on TikTok, you have a lot of freedom to experiment and try new things.

Rather than attempting to invent something new, however, start by looking at what’s already succeeding on TikTok. Your goal should be to take part in an existing trend, such as a challenge or dance; or to model your videos after content that’s already succeeding.

This may sound like cheating, but it isn’t. TikTok is a copycat’s paradise, and that’s by design. Because TikTok places chief priority on community and connection, truly original content is less valuable to the platform than content that builds on something else. This isn’t to say you can copy another piece of content word for word, but it does mean you should find something you can put your own spin on. This is what it means to take part in TikTok’s global community.

Taking part in trends is easy: if a song, meme, or certain format is going viral with lots of people using it, you can tie your brand in with the trend. For example, if several artists or craftspeople started sharing videos showing off their skill, your staff members could jump on that trend by showing off the skills they use for their work or hobbies. If you have a coworker that doesn’t mind embarrassing himself to help the brand, you could even participate in a viral dance challenge by filming them in front of your business sign or storefront.

Ways to model successful content are less obvious because they require some ingenuity on your part. Instead of simply copying trending videos in your own way, find other creators who are using the same concept multiple times successfully, and ask yourself how you can do the same thing in your niche. For example, many creators on TikTok make videos where they teach a useful skill to their audience, such as how to make a dessert or set up an online business. People who do this tend to follow a similar format, usually starting with a one-sentence summary of what they’re about to teach, followed with a clear progression of steps until the end. Depending on your brand’s niche, you might teach your audience useful skills that relate to your business. For example, if you are a bank or offer financial services, you could share helpful finance tips in bite-sized form.

Try to stay flexible

It’s important to stay flexible in your approach to making content for TikTok, because you never know what’s going to work next. You also never know when a successful idea will suddenly stop working, so you shouldn’t paint yourself into a corner doing only one thing. You might showcase different employees in your videos to give viewers a sense of the community that exists at your business. This way your audience will start to see your staff as characters that tell your brand’s story, allowing you to stay flexible with how that story is told. You might have one of your staff members bake a cake with your business’s logo on it one day, then have a different employee tell a true story about an experience they had with a customer the next. Focusing on personality over content allows you to keep learning how to go viral on TikTok in new ways.

Use the right hashtags and keywords

Video descriptions are important for two reasons: first, they give you the opportunity to show what niche your video fits into and who it’s for; second, they can compel your viewer to watch your entire video by hinting at the ending. You have 100 characters to do this in, but shorter descriptions are better, as filling the entire description area can obscure the bottom half of the video.

While people don’t always use hashtags to find videos, TikTok uses hashtags to match videos to people who may like them. Using between four and six hashtags in your video descriptions is typically your best bet. When you choose hashtags to use, find a combination of general, trending, and niche-specific hashtags.

General hashtags are hashtags that lots of people are using, regardless of what niche they’re in. #viral, #foryou, and #fyp are a few examples. While some people advise against using generic hashtags like these, they don’t hurt anything, and they may help you get discovered.

Trending hashtags are tags that are currently being used on viral videos. They usually refer to a specific trend, challenge, or song that the videos all have in common.

Niche-specific hashtags are most important for targeting your audience. These hashtags refer to specific industries, actions, and ideas that people in a specific audience will all understand. You should find some hashtags that relate to your business’s field and use them frequently. You can find hashtags in your niche that people are already using by searching keywords related to your business on the Discover page.

Experiment with your descriptions

A one-sentence description with four to six hashtags will usually serve you well, but you should experiment to find what works best for you. Videos with no hashtags at all can still go viral, and taking this approach and using a punchy, three- to four-word description can leave a bigger impact on viewers. Because of this, social media experts like Robert Benjamin and Joseph Todd recommend using zero hashtags on at least one out of every five videos.

The rest of the time, you should use a balance of trending, general, and niche hashtags. Both of these experts have their own hashtag strategies which involve a combination of these three hashtag types. Joseph Todd says to use two trending hashtags, two niche hashtags, and two general hashtags for every video (aside from the one out of five that doesn’t have hashtags at all). Robert Benjamin also says to use two of each, but recommends using only four hashtags per video. So you might try using two general hashtags combined with two niche hashtags on one video, then try two trending hashtags with two niche hashtags for the next one.

There’s no set rule for how TikTok will respond to certain hashtags, and expert recommendations change as the platform evolves. That’s why experimenting with your hashtags and descriptions is a good idea. Try to get a feel for which hashtags get your videos the most views, and what kinds of descriptions result in the longest watch time.

Upload at the right times (and upload often)

You can upload a video once per day or even once every week and still grow your audience. But if you’re serious about learning how to go viral on TikTok, your best bet is to upload several times per day, and make sure you’re uploading at the right times.

Many self-proclaimed social media experts will say that the times you upload videos don’t matter, or they’ll simply avoid mentioning it altogether. But all else being equal, uploading your videos at peak times can mean the difference between going viral and going unnoticed.

The best times to post on TikTok change slightly from week to week, but they’re generally around the times that people are experiencing a shift in their daily routine. People seem to use TikTok the most in the evening or when they’re in between work shifts, and the best times to post reflect this.

Robert Benjamin’s YouTube channel is a reliable source for up-to-date TikTok secrets and best practices, and he regularly updates his followers on the best times to post as they change. As of this writing, his most recent video says to post:

Between 9:50 and 11:00 AM

Between 12:00 and 2:00 PM

Between 3:00 and 4:30 PM

After 7:00 PM

Just because these are the best times to post on average doesn’t mean they’re the best for you and your audience. As you begin publishing videos regularly, you should pay attention to when your most successful ones were uploaded. On TikTok, your goal should be to find what works and then keep doing it until it stops working. That applies to your upload schedule and your content alike.

How often should I post on TikTok?

You can post as much or as little as you like on TikTok — every video you make will have a chance at getting seen, even if you only upload once every week. But remember, your goal is to market your business, not just to go viral once. Uploading frequently shows viewers that you’re an active account that’s worth following. It also gives you more opportunities to go viral.

To grow rapidly, you should upload at least three videos per day, and up to six times per day when you’re starting out (much more than that and TikTok may temporarily restrict your account as they may suspect you’re a spammer, however). You might even upload eight or nine times on days when you get an influx of new followers, because this helps ensure new fans have plenty of content to keep them interested when they first find you.

If this sounds like too much, keep in mind that content on TikTok is typically very simple. As long as you stay on the lookout for interesting ideas, filming three one-minute videos each day is relatively easy. And you can make a week’s worth of content in one day if you’d rather get it all done in advance. Just save videos you want to publish later to your drafts in TikTok.

Step 2: How to make people watch your videos to the end

Simply getting a lot of views on your videos won’t take you far in terms of success on TikTok. The amount of time people spend watching your videos is critical to going viral again and again. Fortunately, once you’ve targeted the right audience, there are some sure-fire ways to make sure your viewers stick around.

How to make something go viral

As you can probably guess, making a video go viral isn’t about using the right hashtag or keyword so everyone magically sees it. TikTok only uses hashtags and keywords to figure out who should see your video first — if the first few viewers don’t like what they see and swipe away, TikTok won’t promote it to anyone else. It also won’t win you any followers.

Universally, the key to virality is evoking strong emotion. Regardless of which platform you’re on, the videos and posts that go viral almost always evoke an emotional reaction from people:

Humor

Shock or surprise

Anger

Inspiration or encouragement

Curiosity

Often viral media takes the form of a story with a beginning, middle, and end. This approach seems to work the best on TikTok, where you need some type of narrative to keep people engaged throughout the video. That doesn’t mean you have to tell stories or act out skits — it just means you need to think of ideas in terms of a three-part structure, with a hook, buildup, and payoff.

Hook: the introduction to or summary of your video, which takes place in the first three to five seconds. You use the hook to tell the viewer what to expect from your video, whether you’re about to tell a shocking true story or build a neat bird house.

Buildup: this is where the actual video happens. If you’re telling a story, the buildup is the conflict that leads to the resolution. In a recipe video, the buildup is simply the sequence of steps leading to the finished dish.

Payoff: the resolution that satisfies the viewer’s curiosity and makes watching the entire video feel worth it. In a prank video, this is when you see other people reacting in surprise to the prank. In an educational video where you spend the buildup showing someone how to do something, the payoff is presenting the final step and showing off the end result.

As you can see, this three-act structure can be used in countless ways, from stories and skits to recipes, tutorials, pranks, and crafts. The main thing is to establish the video idea in the first few seconds, then have a conclusion that completes that idea or calls back to it.

Whether you’re staging office tours, surprising coworkers with unexpected gifts, or demonstrating a new product, a three-act structure can turn a bland idea into an interesting video. And when you use ideas that evoke emotions, such as humor, sympathy, or surprise, the effect is even more powerful. If a formula for going viral exists, this is it.

You should also experiment with using the description to persuade people to watch until the end. If you’re telling a story, you can use the description to hint at the twist ending. If you’re making a prank or challenge video, you can use the description to express surprise at the way it turns out, evoking curiosity in your viewers.

How many views is viral on TikTok?

Going viral means reaching new people quickly, not just getting lots of views. If you have a video that accumulates one thousand views in five years, that probably wouldn’t excite you much. However, getting a thousand views in five minutes would be extraordinarily promising, and probably indicate that your video is going viral already.

A common belief is that a video has gone viral on TikTok when it reaches one million views. However, you don’t need to reach one million new viewers to market your business successfully, and many TikTok creators repeatedly get many millions of views on their videos. At the end of the day, your focus should be on creating content that your target audience loves. If you’re doing it right, the numbers will come.

How long does it take for a TikTok to go viral?

TikTok is a fast-moving platform. When you publish a video, it starts being shown to people right away. If the first people to see it respond favorably, such as by following your profile or watching all the way through, TikTok assumes your video is valuable to its audience and promotes it to more people. If your video is going to go viral, you can usually tell within the first two hours, because it will start to get attention and generate feedback right away. From there, your video can amass millions of views in a matter of days or even hours, depending on how many people TikTok finds to show it to.

Step 3: Get new viewers to click the “follow” button

Once you’ve targeted your audience correctly and made a video that keeps them engaged until the end, getting them to follow your account is easy. After all, if they watch to the end it means they enjoyed your video. They just need to know that you’re going to keep making content they enjoy, and all they need is a simple reminder to click the “follow” button.

A tried-and-true method for getting new followers is to insert a call-to-action into your videos. You might say something like, “for more daily videos like this one, click the plus sign on my profile picture,” or “follow me for more videos like this.”

You can put your call-to-action at the very end, or you can insert it closer to the middle, such as before your payoff when you disclose the big resolution. You might say, “before I tell you what it was, click the follow button if you want to get more stories like this one.” Or for a cooking or crafting video, say, “now before I show you the end result, please click the ‘follow’ button if you haven’t already for more daily videos just like this.”

When you ask people to follow you, you need to tell them why. Let them know what kind of value they can expect from you. This can be as simple as saying, “follow me for more funny videos like this one.” Or you might point out the specific benefit your content provides: “follow me for cutting-edge financial advice every day.”

Some people believe the text in the video description should be used for the call-to-action. While this can be effective, using the description to make people stick around until the end is better. When you’re learning how to go viral on TikTok, watch time is more important than new followers. For this reason, you should use the description to compel people to watch to the end, then use the last section of the video to ask them to follow.

Just like that, you can discover how to go viral on TikTok again and again, and build a loyal following in the process.

I went viral on TikTok — now what?

By now you’ve figured out how to make your TikTok go viral after posting. Maybe you’ve taken these instructions for a test drive and your very first video blew up unexpectedly. If so, congratulations!

But that begs the question: once you know how to go viral on TikTok, what comes next? How do you utilize virality to benefit your brand?

While the exact answer will be different for everybody, it basically boils down to this: keep doing it.

On TikTok, ordinary people have the power to make a message go viral at will. Imagine being able to advertise your business on the world’s biggest TV channel every day. That’s basically what you have with TikTok.

Yes, you have to create videos that people enjoy, or they won’t go viral. But once you’ve figured out how to do that while staying consistent with your brand, all that’s left is to keep doing what works.

Why you should get started right now

Earlier we mentioned how difficult it is to get organic growth on social media. TikTok is the exception to this rule, which is good news for now, but it won’t last forever.

Right now, you’re facing a small, ever-shrinking window of opportunity to make your brand go viral on TikTok. Just like today’s biggest YouTube creators got started before that platform was over-saturated, tomorrow’s biggest TikTok stars will be the ones who got started today.

The only problem is, people have a tendency to let opportunities slip by them.

So don’t put this off any longer. You don’t need an extensive content strategy, and you don’t need everything to be perfect. On TikTok, even the simplest, most underwhelming videos can go viral. You might even strike gold with your very first upload.

To find out, all you have to do is get started.