A super detailed guide to operating Tik Tok!

All the useful information and tips shared today are closely centered around the most important point: by increasing the number of likes, attention, comments, forwarding rate and other indicators, you can obtain more official and accurate recommendations and gain greater exposure.

1. How to make good use of Tik Tok’s recommendation algorithm?

Tip 1: Adjust your publishing time

Statistics show that 62% of users watch Douyin before meals and before going to bed, while only 10.9% watch Douyin during fragmented time such as on the way to work or in the toilet.

There is no uniform standard for the best time to publish. The so-called 12 noon, 18:00, and 21:00-22:00 on weekdays, or Friday night and weekends, etc., are all just time periods when people may be relatively free and can only be used as a reference at most.

The truly scientific way to adjust the release time is to imagine: after you release the video, are your targeted users in the most appropriate state to watch the video at that point in time?

For example, chicken soup and emotional stories are best posted between 9pm and 11pm, because this is the golden period when most men and women feel empty, lonely and cold, which just suits the occasion. For inspirational and career-oriented stories, 8am to 9am and 11:30pm to 12:30pm are their golden time periods.

Regarding release time, there is no best, just the most suitable time.

Tip 2: Improve 4 indicators

Tik Tok evaluates your performance in the cold start phase mainly based on four indicators: the number of likes, comments, reposts, and completion rate. Therefore, if you want to get recommendations, you must mobilize all resources to improve these four indicators after the video is released:

1. In the video description, guide users to like, comment, forward or finish watching the video. Many short videos will write "Be sure to watch to the end" or "If you feel sorry for the little sister, please like it" in the video description and at the beginning and end of the video, in order to increase the completion rate.

2. In the video description, set some interactive questions to guide users to leave comments and increase the number of comments.

3. Reply to user comments, extract the core ideas of the video, guide more users to participate in the topic discussion, and further increase the number of comments.

4. Prepare great comments in advance. After the video is released, ask friends to write in the comment section and guide users to interact more around this topic to improve these four indicators.

Tip 3: Actively participate in challenges

There are many ways to become popular, but the simplest and most effective way is to use the “Popular Challenge” function of Tik Tok.

On Douyin, there are different challenges every day. You can judge the potential of a topic to become popular based on comprehensive comparisons, and then select the topic that you think is most likely to become popular and imitate it, which can increase your chances of being recommended.

Tip 4: Continuous maintenance

Tik Tok’s recommendation algorithm sometimes “digs up old videos” and thus makes some high-quality old videos popular.

Therefore, for high-quality videos, you need to continue to like, comment, and forward them, and keep operating them. Maybe after a while, this video will be recommended.

2. What is the process of professionally producing Tik Tok videos?

The first step of filming - determine the topic and script

What is positioning? Is it to be practical? Want to be funny? Want to be serious? Or do you want to hunt for novelty? What is a script? It is the shooting process and overall plan.

The second step of shooting - shooting ideas and forms

How to make the picture attractive? Handsome men and beautiful women appear on the screen, and the pictures must be beautiful enough by using filters, beauty and special effects functions. How to keep viewers staying longer?

Practical: Quickly explain the theme, cover with copy

Entertainment: with attractive music

The effect is better when combined with real people

The third step of shooting - shooting tools & rules

Combined with tools that can help with shooting: shooting brackets, lighting, etc.

Prepare costumes, makeup, props, etc.

Make full use of the built-in camera's built-in functions: speed, countdown, slow motion, etc.

Need to be original and without watermark: mainly refers to videos uploaded locally

Shooting Complete – Editing Video

Background music: Use different styles of music to create the style of the video. The Android version of Tik Tok can upload music locally

Special effects utilization: (mainly for locally uploaded videos), make full use of effects such as action, reverse flow, and repetition

Cover selection: Choose the most exciting video as the cover

Video Release

Release time: Combined with the target group’s habits of using Douyin and their status at the time

Title: Not too long, concise, add suspense, rhetorical questions, etc.

Cover: Choose the most exciting picture as the cover to attract viewers

Comments & Private Messages: Actively reply to comments and private messages, and fans who are turned over can become loyal fans

3. What kind of content is likely to go viral on Douyin?

1. Good-looking, handsome men and beautiful women

2. A drama lover

3. Talented people such as singing and playing the piano

4. Skill teaching, such as cooking and decoration

5. Creative and special effects

6. Male and female cross-dressing

7. Cute babies and pets

8. Beautiful scenery and travel sharing

9. Cartoons and Animation

10. Real and touching video stories and character moments

All in all, it’s a beautiful moment related to life.

4. Why doesn’t Tik Tok recommend it?

1. There is a watermark

2. Content that is not suitable for dissemination. Douyin attaches great importance to the health education of minors.

3. Content that looks like advertising

4. If the content and format are boring and monotonous for a long time, and the effect is not good after several recommendations, the account weight will be reduced and it will gradually become a "zombie account."

5. The video is blurry and indistinguishable

5. Will it really become popular if you post it twice?

uncertain. Of those that are exactly the same twice, very few will become popular, and most of them will remain mediocre.

So, how can you make it popular the second time you post it? You can optimize the title copy, replace it with a more eye-catching cover image, re-edit and optimize the video content, and interact in the comment section, so that the second time you post it, it will have a chance to become popular.

6. Do I need to add location when posting videos?

It depends on two situations. The first one is that the work has certain local attributes, such as dialect, region, iconic buildings, title description, etc. Then, adding positioning will increase the weight of the recommendation.

But if your content is too vertical, or has a unified style, and the overall content has nothing to do with local attributes, then don't add it.

7. What are the benefits of adding POI?

Helps with exposure. POI is the normal information of the video and is a distribution entrance of Douyin. The POI details page is a content aggregation page similar to the follow page. Any video with this POI becomes your potential drainage channel.

Enrich video information. For fans of food videos, POI can let them know the location of the store and make your video content more informative.

To put it simply: without reducing the original traffic, a new traffic entrance is added. It is beneficial as long as it is added at the right time. See the previous item for details.

8. What are the benefits of guiding users to click on the POI icon?

For food exploration videos, if users click on your video to learn about the location information, it means that users have become interested in the store through your video, and that your video content is highly attractive to users, which will give your content a greater chance of becoming a video with more traffic.

9. How to guide users to click on the POI icon?

There are many ways to guide users to click on the POI icon. There are three paths as follows:

a. Voice guidance in the video: Want to know where this store is? Just click the icon in the lower left corner!

b. Video copy guidance: Go to this store today and click on the icon to meet me!

c. Comments guide clicks: Reply to users who ask where the store is, and tell them to click the icon above the comment to find out!

10. Will guiding users to click on POIs be considered advertisements?

Won't! Because a store is a reasonable content scenario for a food exploration video, telling users the address is reasonable information.

However, the store name and activities cannot be exposed in long shots, such as 5 seconds in a 10s video.

11. How to choose the Douyin cover?

Add a title so that the targeted audience can know what the theme you want to express is at a glance, which is more conducive to accurate traffic;

Once a stranger on Douyin becomes your fan because of one of your Douyin videos, the unified cover style will allow new fans in your vertical field to quickly become your accurate fans, which is conducive to the accumulation of high-quality fans and the cultivation of stickiness.

12. Methods to increase exposure of Douyin account

1. Grab the hot comments: Pay more attention to some big names in your own field, and leave wonderful comments at the beginning of their video push. Once his video becomes popular, the number of likes and attention on your comments will also increase. The fans of big names are also your potential fans. By constantly grabbing the hot comments, you will attract a steady stream of traffic.

2. Go to DOU+ and recharge quickly. To put it simply, this function is to pay the TikTok platform to increase the exposure of precise recommendations based on natural algorithms.

13. Is it necessary to design a slogan when making short videos for personal IP?

Better add! This slogan is your label, a unique element that makes people remember you. For example: I am Papi Jiang, a woman who combines beauty and talent.

14. How to come up with a good title

First of all, you must understand that under the algorithm recommendation mechanism of Tik Tok, the function of the title is not only to attract attention. The most important function is to tell the algorithm through your title what precise audience to recommend to.

For example, if all the words and sentences in your title are written around self-media, then in the first wave of 1,000 recommended traffic, a larger proportion will naturally be recommended to fans who like to watch self-media! Are the four indicators obtained in this way much higher than those of inaccurately recommended videos?

Therefore, please don’t use the various shocking expressions in WeChat. Under the decentralized algorithm recommendation, this set of expressions is useless.

15. I don’t have any fans in the early stage. Can I get some fans ?

I advise you not to have such little thoughts. Because the mechanism and path of machine-generated followers are contrary to the official logic of Douyin, many accounts have been used to increase followers but nothing happened. In fact, it’s just that the official has not bothered you yet.

But for operators who want to build a big account, once they increase followers multiple times or on a large scale, their future videos will not receive any traffic recommendations, and the account will be useless.

16. Is mutual promotion such as following and liking each other useful?

It is useful, but it does not help much in increasing the number of recommendations, because the official weighting of this type of operation is very small. It is okay to play with it in the early stage when you are just starting out, but if you want to improve the four indicators in the later stage, you still need to rely on original and good content.

17. Video prompt disappeared/under review. Why?

The video disappeared = the content violated the rules and was removed by the platform

The video is under review = the video enters the Douyin platform review process normally, just wait patiently.

18. How long does the review take?

Generally, the review will be completed within a few minutes; depending on the machine and manual status on the day, the review time for some works may be longer. Douyin has dedicated staff to monitor the review time, allocate machines and manpower in a targeted manner, and try their best to ensure user experience.

Author:HOOMV
Source: Dinghuo School (HOOMVP)