Over the past year, I have been able to create a substantial following on social media with over 900,000 followers across platforms. My brothers and I have turned our TikTok account, @highlandbros, into a full-time business by following the guidelines of these 5 steps.
1. Consistency
Consistency could be considered the most important aspect of building anything in life. The best way to see growth is dedication and working hard toward any goal you may have. One way to achieve this is creating content daily, e.g., posting 2-4 times a day. Making content daily will take you to the next level. Breaks in content will kill your algorithm- TikTok is specifically made to show mass amounts of videos daily to its users. To capitalize on this algorithm, stay consistent with your creation. My brothers and I post four videos a day on TikTok, which is roughly 120 videos a month. This gives us a higher chance to reach more users, generating more views and followers to build our brand. Timing matters as well: according to an article by SocialPilot, the best times a day to post on TikTok are 11am, 3pm, and between 6:30-9pm.
2. Niche
The next step in creating a brand online is a niche. Focusing on certain interests or themes, a niche, is extremely important: it gives an app such as TikTok an idea of the audience you wish to convey. If your content is all over the place, TikTok will not be able to recognize what your accounts purpose is, therefore making it harder to catch the algorithm. Creating a good niche for yourself before you even make your account, will give you a much higher chance to instantly start gaining views and followers. This also gives TikTok users a reason to follow you. If your account has multiple niches, someone may be less likely to give you a follow, as they are specifically looking to follow you for one main reason.
3. Quality
High quality content is important for any social media platform. Nobody wants to watch low quality videos. Part of this means having a good quality camera, another part is editing. There are free apps to edit your videos. A great one that I use daily is CapCut. Apps like this makes adding text, graphics, and trimming your videos simpler. Also, your videos will be easier and more entertaining to watch. The Drum says that TikTok is pushing longer form content, similar to YouTube, in 2024. This means you should be producing high quality, engaging content, that people are able to watch for longer periods of time coming into 2024. Also, the longer people watch your video, the more TikTok will push your video to a larger audience. Make sure you are keeping up with these TikTok algorithm trends to keep your content top notch.
4. Marketing Yourself
Marketing yourself as a legitimate brand is the best way to start earning money as a creator. You want all your platforms to be easily accessible, easy to look at, and include contact information. A great way to become easily accessible on social media are websites like Linktree. With Linktree, you can have all your websites and pages in one link. Putting something like this in your bios makes it easier for people to follow you across all platforms. Simple ways to make your account easier to look at is having a high quality, bright profile picture. Additionally, a short and concise bio and high-quality content thumbnails for all your feed posts helps. All this will make it more likely for brands to reach out for possible brand deals, as well as giving consumers more reasons to follow you and watch your content.
5. Connections
A great way for smaller creators to grow, is to connect with larger creators. It may be daunting, but reaching out can help answer questions you may have and give you collaboration opportunities. Not every creator will answer, but you never know who may reply, collaborate and help grow your brand. Websites such as Afluencer are great ways for smaller creators to find and collaborate with other creators looking to grow their brand. Whether you go down this route, or a good old fashioned Instagram DM, reaching out is the most important part! Other than this, it can help studying what bigger creators are doing, and to mimic their habits. An example of this may be posting the same amount of videos they do. Doing this will likely result in higher engagement on your own end, because the TikTok algorithm works hand in hand with creators among specific niches.
In conclusion, growing your social media brand is not an easy task, but following these 5 simple steps will help you start off in the right direction. Content creation has been able to change my life over this past year, and I know it can do the same for you if you are up for the challenge.
Sources
Huse, Silje Tunes. “As TikTok pivots to long-form content, are consumers ready?” connective3 | The Drum Network, December 13, 2023, https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2023/12/13/tiktok-pivots-long-form-content-are-consumers-ready.
P.T, Anoob. “What is the Best Time to Post on TikTok in 2024? Pinpoint the best time to post on TikTok to score high engagement, any day of the week. Uncover prime posting times for various industries for optimal impact.” Unknown Publication Name, February 6, 2024. https://www.socialpilot.co/blog/best-time-to-post-ontiktok#:~:text=According%20to%20marketers%20around%20the,somewhere%20between%20Tuesdays%20and%20Thursdays.
Weber, Natalie. “Afluencer 101 for Brands (Getting Started Guide).” Afluencer 411. https://afluencer.com/afluencer-101-for-brands-getting-started-guide/
