3 Things I've Learned So Far as a Tik Tok Content Creator/Hobbyist

I've been on Tik Tok almost every day since around May 2020. What started off as a Lockdown diversion of attention and energies, has turned into now, 12,600 followers at the time of writing, a YouTube and Patreon regular schedule of content creation, and just starting to see the monetisation happening as a result of semi-consistency in production.

The "semi-" consistency has been my greatest struggle. In theory, I could scroll Tik Tok and grasp the content styles within the first two weeks. But to actually pick a niche, plan and produce that kind of content -- it just felt like more "work" to me. And at the time, I didn't want Tik Tok to be work, I wanted it to be my hobby.

It's been just that. A really fun hobby. Until I felt motivated to see if I could start monetizing -- and, I'm in Australia, we don't have the Tik Tok Creator Fund (although I have seen from US creators, it's not that great either). So my journey with Tik Tok has been a combination of self-indulgence as well as testing and evaluating, "What's suddenly gone viral?!" and what has obviously flopped.

Here's a few things that I've learned along the way, in no particular order of importance:

1) Give it 48 hours.

In the year 2023, you have to give it 48 hours to see if it's really going to go viral. Back in the 2020, 2021, sure -- it could go viral within the first 12 hours. And you'll see those numbers climb up as you refresh within 20 minutes, 1 hour, and like "Woah, okay, that Tik Tok is going viral!"

Ever since Tik Tok seemingly has put in more efforts to cater to businesses and sponsored content, that doesn't appear to be the virality patterns. I've noticed that a potentially viral Tik Tok could take up to 48 hours to be "seen" enough to then go viral. (My definition of viral is anything in the hundreds of thousands of views). After about a day of the content being up, if you can see it change from 300 to 400 views to 1000 to 2000+ views, then it has the potential to go viral. If it stays stuck at about 200 views, it's not going anywhere. (That's only based on my own experience).

Algorithm conspiracies -- Tik Tok purposely suppressing views? -- I don't know about any of that. But in my experience, virality does correlate to entertainment. Which leads me to point no. 2...

2) If you're not having fun, the audience isn't having fun.

Who wants to watch someone struggle and create content "just for the sake it"? If you told yourself, "Okay, I'm quitting my job, I'm going to be a content creator full time" and you restrict yourself to a 9 - 5 schedule, you run it militaristically -- you just might burn out.

Content creation requires inpsiration, and it's the same with any other art form. If you don't have the energy for it, it will come across to the audience. You can't really use Tik Tok to be your personal bouncing board for therapy -- unless you change it to private, friends only. (And you know those are friends that are happy to watch and listen!). Or if you do, don't expect to monetise from it.

In my experience as a creator, there's still a level of "scripting" that is a part of my process even before pressing the record button. It could be as simple as running a few key points and general script in my mind, grasping on a particular angle that I want to speak about, and yes -- often, the Tik Tok that ends up on my channel was not the first take.

3) People don't click into funnels anymore.

Stop it with the content funnel marketing. Everyone is sick of it! Rather just be direct and authentic. Give them the link as it is. Link in bio works if the link is genuinely super long. Otherwise if it's something easy, eg. "Patreon address" -- just add it to your captioning. Comment the link straight underneath the video. People can memorise easy link address. They can type it into their own browser if it's yourhandle.com or some other simple variation.

Trying to "coerce" audiences into a marketing funnel just plain sucks in 2023. And that is my opinion.

Thanks for reading. Even after I've just written this piece, I realise, I don't want to keep saying "link in bio" even for my YouTube channel. I gotta switch it up! YouTube handles exist now. It doesn't necessarily need to be a link in bio.

That's all I can think of for now, this might be an ongoing series.