Want to become a TikTok influencer, but not sure where to begin?
Here at TIKTAL, we’ve been working with over 100 well-known brands and over as many creators on an exclusive basis over the years. So we’ve learnt a thing or two about what makes a successful TikTok influencer!
Here’s a step-by-step guide so you can get started in no time and earn money from TikTok.
Step 1. Decide what kind of content to focus on
First of all, define what direction you’re going to take – don’t just randomly create any content that comes to your mind! This means you need to choose a specific niche (or a couple of related niches), and be clear about who your target audience is, plus how you differ from other TikTok creators who cover a similar niche and audience.
Find your niche
Sure, you could start making videos on various topics and see what gets the best engagement rates, but that’s going to be hit-and-miss.
Instead, spend some time upfront on defining a clear niche. Health and lifestyle, yoga, beauty, fitness, teaching or cooking are only broad categories, but they’re too saturated and generic to be your niche. You want to get as specific as you can here.
So what is a niche?
Your niche as a TikTok influencer = a narrow segment of any industry which is intended to solve unique problems of a certain group of viewers.
How to you define your niche?
Pick an industry that appeals to you. Ideally, one that matches your interests or is related to a hobby or passion of yours. Then, watch and analyze as many TikTok videos related to this area as you can, so you can understand how you could contribute something fresh and valuable with your content compared to what is already out there.
A few questions to ask yourself here are:
- “Who is my content serving?”
- “How can my content help people?”
- “How can I make my viewers’ lives better – is it by providing valuable information, by entertaining them, inspiring them, or a mixture of those?”
Once you’re clear on the above, it’s time to start looking for your perfect audience.
Determine your target audience
Any brand will look at your audience as a TikTok influencer, to see if it matches with who they’re trying to target in their campaign. So, having a relevant audience is extremely important.
There’s one common mistake new TikTok creators make: they try to get as many random followers as possible, regardless of relevance to their niche. In most cases, quantity doesn’t mean quality, and it’s much better to have fewer but more curated followers than a huge number of people who don’t engage with your content.
Also, pay attention to the location of your audience, as brands will factor this in when planning advertising campaigns – especially if they’re trying to convince new customers to buy their products in a specific market. If a brand is based out of Europe and wants to target the European market specifically, they’ll be looking for a TikTok influencer who has this kind of audience in their follower base.
To sum up, you’ll need to have an audience that is both relevant to the brand’s niche in terms of their interest, but also in terms of their demographics, including location.
To help with this process, write down a description of your “perfect follower”. You can then tailor your content based on the kind of viewers you’d like to attract.
In this description, include:
- How old they are.
- Where they live.
- What kind of content they like.
- What their interests are.
- When they normally watch TikTok.
- What their life is like.
- And more (if your niche is around food, then what their favourite type of food is would be relevant)
The more questions you can answer, the more accurate a picture you’ll get!
Analyze your competitors and find a way to stand out
You need to be aware of what other creators in your niche are doing. This will help you offer something unique and interesting to your audience, whilst incorporating some of the latest trends that are working well for your type of content. This is a crucial step to carve yourself a spot as a TikTok influencer in a highly competitive landscape.
Spend at least 30 minutes a day to stay on top of trends and what others are doing. To do this efficiently, head over to TikTok’s Creative Center and search for creators in your niche, or by relevant hashtags. Ask yourself – “How can I make this better, add something unique, make this more entertaining?”
Step 2. Register on TikTok
Why not sign up on the app first, you may ask?
One word: timing.
As experienced TikTok influencer @lawbymike recommends in his podcast, the best strategy is to start posting right after creating your account.
For the TikTok algorithm to notice you, you should post 3 times a day during at least the fist 4 days after you’ve signed up.
This shows you’re an active creator and the algorithm will look for this validation from the get go. So if you create an account immediately but then take a couple of weeks to figure out what your niche and target audience are, and you don’t post during that time, you’ll be shooting yourself in the foot!
Step 3. Create unique videos
At this stage, it’s about producing high-quality content that fits TikTok’s format well. Keep in mind that content on TikTok doesn’t need to be super polished, which differs from other social media platforms, so no point in spending hours crafting a video. What comes off as natural normally works well over here.
What’s worth paying attention to when making your content are the plot and the main message you want to convey.
There should be a build up to draw your viewers in, and a key takeaway from each video. The more suspense you can create in the first few seconds, the more likely it is your viewers will stick around until the end – and that’s good for your completion ratio, a key metric the TikTok algorithm takes into account.
Still, do spend some time editing your videos and consider the following in particular.
Pay attention to trends
Trends are fleeting by nature, so you should always keep up with the latest. Here again TikTok’s own Creative Center can give you a good idea of what’s working well on the app right now.
You can also use Google and look at the top-ranked articles related to TikTok trends.
For instance, a post about TikTok trends by Magiclinks says the following:
“Not surprisingly, diary/vlog and comedy TikTok remain on top. Many TikTokers’ success started with a single viral comedy video, and influencers also use TikTok as a behind-the-scenes tool to engage with fans.”
With this in mind, you could adapt your content to be more humorous and show viewers more of your daily life, using the “day in the life of” format to engage your followers.
Right now, content related to Christmas gifting, shopping and fashion trends are obviously popular. So your content could tap into these, whilst adding your own unique spin on it. Stay on top of the trends to make sure your content remain relevant; but be sure to add your own take on things!
Find unique hashtags
Thanks to hashtags, viewers can quickly find new and relevant content based on their interests. Effectively, hashtags connect your content to different communities of interest. Hence using the right hashtags is one of the surest way to reach your target audience.
So how do you pick the best hashtags for your content?
The first and most reliable approach is to simply use TikTok’s search bar. Once you click on the “Hashtag” block inside the app, you’ll get information such as the number of times any hashtag was mentioned, and other popular variations of that hashtag.
Social media experts advise excluding overly generic hashtags and try to use more specific variants.
Instead of “#influencers”, use #yogainfluencers”; or instead of “#cooking”, use “#vegancooking” depending on your specific niche. This helps the algorithm serve the most relevant content to viewers, and your content is more likely to get noticed by more people this way.
Another option is to check what hashtags your main competitors use. If it works for their account, it might work for yours as well.
Lastly, you could use Google Trends to find popular search terms and pick hashtags based on those. Select a recent time period, such as the past 30 days, and pick a location based on who your target audience is, to find most relevant search terms. You can also compare different related terms to find the most relevant ones to use.
As an example, if your niche was around vegan cooking and your target audience was mainly based in the UK, here’s what a relevant comparison could look like:
Step 4. Engage your audience
Satisfying the audience should be your most important goal. There are so many great creators on there, your followers can easily switch over if they don’t have a connection with you.
Followers want to feel that you’re a real person – the more they relate to you, the more engaged they’ll be, so starting conversations from your videos helps. Try to reply to your followers’ comments and direct messages in a timely manner. Follow them back and engage on their content if they’re creators too.
Step 5. Use professional tools to improve your account quality
Video editors and filters
Whilst natural content tends to do well on the platform, you still need to do some editing. Excellent tools you can try for this include InShot and Adobe Spark. They let you easily trim and chop videos to your liking.
Still, some simple built-in filters might just do the trick to make your videos stand out.
Link-in-bio apps
A link-in-bio is indispensable for any TikTok influencer these days.
TikTok allows creators to insert a single link in their bio. It could be your website, Instagram or Facebook page. But if you have multiple social accounts and other links to share (for example your merch store), you’ll need a landing page that contains all your links on it. That’s what a link-in-bio does.
Short on time? Try out Beacons.ai or Snipfeed.co.
Content planners
Planners are a great way to schedule your content in advance, so you have a bird’s eye view of what’s going on across your social media accounts.
Here are some tools to check out: Later and Shoptik.
Logo removers
Finally, you might need to download TikTok videos without watermark, either for YouTube shorts or to re-use someone else’s content on your own social media channel (with permission).
No matter what the reason is, in such cases a logo remover tool will come in handy. You can use SSSTikTok.
Step 6. Improve your skills
There are plenty of resources and guides to help new creators grow. Make the most of these! A few sources worth looking into are below.
Vanessa Lau is both a professional digital marketing strategist and a social media influencer across YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Meta. She knows what she’s talking about! Follow her to get the latest insights and nuggets to stay on top of industry trends.
On this YouTube channel, you can find short informational videos from several social media experts. New videos come out daily, so you’ll always be up-to-date with social media marketing trends. The team at Social Media Examiner produces clear, structured and valuable content that will help you become a TikTok influencer.
Social media expert Joseph Todd created a series of TikTok tutorials to get you started in your career as a TikTok influencer. Joseph’s TikTok playlist contains 35 videos, each about 10 minutes long. Watch his tutorials to get to know some of the essential strategies for success on TikTok.
Step 7. Land brand deals
At this point, you’ve got all the basics nailed down. Now is the time to start looking for brand collaborations – and make some money!
There are two options to find brand deals: try and do it on your own, or apply to an influencer marketing agency.
Find deals on your own
Even though it seems hard at first sight, finding brand deals by yourself is definitely not impossible. You can do it in 3 steps.
Step 1
Research brands who are likely to be interested in your content as a TikTok influencer. Have a look at successful TikTok creators in your niche and check out their promotional videos. Note down which brands and products the’ve promoted in the past, and what type of content they used to promote those brands.
Also look into accounts of brands you’d like to work with, and see what type of content they have on their page.
Step 2
Prepare a few well-thought-out email templates to reach out to those brands, explaining how your content can add value to them based on the first step. Don’t forget to include your key account statistics in there, such as total followers, engagement rate, and completion ratio (which you can get from your analytics pages).
Create a simple slide presentation where you describe yourself and your content, share some strategies and ideas relevant to the brand in question along with your latest TikTok metrics. This will make you look professional and dedicated, which is exactly what brands are looking for!
Step 3
Send your pitch to as many brands as you can, by direct messaging them or finding their email address, and analyze the results after a week. Be ready to not receive any feedback; it’s okay to follow up a couple of times, just don’t be too pushy.
Don’t hesitate to improve your copy or think about a better way to present yourself. For instance, you could send a personalized video pitching yourself and what you can add to the brand as a TikTok influencer, rather than just sending generic text. The most important thing in this final step is to not give up: put some effort in and be patient!
Work with an influencer marketing agency
Doing brand outreach on your own is the hard way: it’s time-consuming and doesn’t give you any guaranteed results whatsoever.
On the other hand, an influencer marketing agency like TIKTAL will do all the hard work of finding the best possible brand opportunities for you. This way, you can just focus on creating content and not worry about the business side of things.
Why work with us at TIKTAL? Well…
- We’ve managed over 100 TikTok influencers on an exclusive basis (such as @thekarrigantaylor, @leticiagardner, or @walkerjbryant).
- We’ve partnered with over 100 famous brands on exciting campaigns (such as FabFitFun, Under Armour, or CASETiFY).
- Every influencer in our talent pool is assigned a personal manager who’s always here to help.
- We carefully listen to our influencers and get them the exact brand deals they’re looking for.
- We guarantee clear influencer-brand agreements and timely payments.
- We communicate with our influencers constantly, so they’re all up to date and know what to do next.
- We always go the extra mile to source the most valuable brand deals and the best terms for our talents.
Want to apply? Fill out this form – we look forward to working with you!