How Authors Can Go Viral on TikTok

Hello friends and lovers!

I have been receiving a lot of messages over email and Instagram on my tiktok successes. These tips I will be going over can pertain to any type of niche, not just authors or book bloggers.

It is no surprise that I’ve been loving TikTok’s BookTok community, it is warm, friendly, and overall gives me happiness!

In less than three months of creating my account I passed my Instagram follower account —that took me 10 months to garner— and am over 3k followers.

Three thousand might not sound like a lot, but oh my god! It sure makes a difference and it’s amazing so many people follow along for Burning Little Secrets.

So how did I reach a few semi-viral videos? (I say Semi, because the views have garnered over 20 thousand views which is a large amount, but the term viral is based on perception).

I don’t claim to be any type of expert at all, but below are tips that have helped me and by following these, they can help your tiktok videos go viral! Which will attract more attention to your page, more views, more follows, more sales, etc…

Niche Hashtags

• If you want followers and high organic engagement, you’ll want to be in a niche. (I know, like all other platforms). Think of your niche as your community, that’s where your reader hangs out.

• My niche? Well, it happens to be contemporary romance readers who are just as smutty as me. My keyword is smut, there’s a lot of others just like me!

• A few hashtags that helped me in my niche:

  • #smuttok #readmoreromance #booktok #romancerecs #steamyreads #spicyreads #smutty #romancereadersoftiktok

  • In TikTok you can search a broad hashtag such as: “Romance” and within their tabs they have a section named “Hashtags” which will show you top hashtags with the amount of views in them that can help you discover what other hashtags you should be checking out for your niche!

Viral Sounds

• TikTok’s algorithm is based on watch time and viral sounds.

• See what’s trending on your Discovery tab or flip through the For You Page and you’ll start to hear trending sounds and videos that will help you. Make sure you can connect it to your niche somehow!!

Hook

• Catchy titles that grab your audience right away, that’s what you need.

• Starting your video with a question, or solving a problem, or even starting it with “you” are key things that help contribute to a hook.

• What are popular videos doing in your niche? This is a great research method I used to see what worked for me!

Length of video

• As I mentioned earlier, TikTok’s algorithm is based on watchtime, and how do you get more watch time? Yup, by hooking your audience in right away. (See above for examples)

• The length of your video should be determined by your analytics, but your hook plays into this as well, keep that in mind.

• According to my analytics, people tend to drop off anywhere from 8 to 10 seconds.

Engagement

• One that is often forgotten, which is why I left it last. I want this to be what you remember. ENGAGEMENT IS KEY!

• Tiktok is so much fun! Have fun with it!

• Each hashtag is its own community, go into that party and stick around to see if you like it. Engage with others by watching their video all the way through, comment to start a conversation. It helps their video and you’ve gained a friend because they will most likely follow and/or engage with your video(s).

• Comments! Anytime someone comments on your video, please respond to them as soon as possible. Engagement helps to place your video on TikTok’s algorithm. I’ve seen research say otherwise, but I have to tell you, each time comments come in and I respond, my views shoot up!

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