The first week is the busiest week. It’s the most important week where you get ready, figure out what to post, and record your content.
Get a dedicated person to run the channel
According to Charlotte, that person needs these qualities:
- Thick skin: Charlotte has tested faceless videos, but they didn’t work out. So, you’ll need a face for your videos. But that person should not be easily bristled by online comments and should be happy to be on camera. If you have the budget, you can bypass this by hiring talents.
- Consistent: To succeed on TikTok, you need to post at least once a day. But expect there to be no results in the early days.
- Strategic: It’s not just about posting randomly and grabbing onto every single trend. There’s a method to the madness. The person should know what to target, what content to create, and what to prioritize.
- Knows video editing: They should be familiar with the style of short-form video editing. Quick cuts, speed talking, and more.
Start account farming
Use your account and start searching for and scrolling through videos in your niche. You should like and comment on these videos. The goal here is to ‘tune’ the algorithm to align with your niche and let TikTok know you’re active on the platform.
Target long-tail keywords
Since there are only four weeks to rank, you don’t want to compete with thousands of videos trying to rank for broad terms like “pickleball”. You’d want to go for a keyword like “2 bounce rule pickleball”, one which fewer people are creating content around and a higher chance your video will show up when someone searches for it.
Plan 80% FYP, 20% search-based content
If your account is new and without authority, your content is unlikely to rank for the keywords you want to target. So, the strategy here is to do an 80/20:
- 80% of your content should aim to land on the For You Page (FYP)
- 20% of your content should be searched-based
The FYP is a personalized recommendation feed that shows users videos based on what TikTok’s algorithm thinks you’ll enjoy, whether it is to a follower or non-follower. The FYP matters because it is where discovery happens. Even if you have zero followers, your video can go viral if the algorithm pushes it onto the right FYPs. That’s why creators often talk about “making content for the FYP”.
Film and edit your content
Most of your time will be spent on filming and editing. For example, Charlotte’s team takes around two hours to film and up to 10 hours to edit for four to five videos. So, you’d want to get started as soon as possible. Make sure you include a hook in the first three seconds of all your videos. Think of your hook as the ‘headline’—it should be catchy and grab attention. For example, one of Pickle GO’s videos has this hook: “How to hit a tweener so you can be a winner.” Simple rhyme, but it works.
Week 2: Begin posting
You’re preparing everything in week one. By week two, you should be publishing. At least one video a day. Just like regular SEO, make sure you’re optimizing the on-feed SEO of your videos. Tips from Charlotte:
- Captions: Always turn on captions and edit them (within the app) so they’re accurate.
- Video descriptions: Include three related keywords you want to rank for and summarise the video (maximum 500 characters)
- Hashtags: Have an average of three to seven hashtags and avoid keyword spamming.
Continue posting, looking at your analytics, and figuring out what’s working and what’s not. To know whether your search-based videos are doing well, go to Search analytics under Creator Search Insights. This is similar to our good old Google Search Console.
Under “Search analytics”, look for “Search views” under “Your inspired posts”.
Here are your top viewed videos brought in from search. Get inspirations on what type of videos will do well by looking at “Search terms”.
You’d also want to continue account farming—it’s social media, after all. Keep on liking, commenting, and engaging with other videos in your niche. You know you’re developing authority when you’re For You page is mostly about your niche, as well as the recommendations you see on Creator Search Insights. For the search-based videos you’ve published and it’s not ranking, a tactic Charlotte suggests testing is changing the captions or hashtags on those videos.