If you’re wondering how to go viral on TikTok, some key steps exist to get your videos in front of massive audiences. Knowing the best ways to go viral on TikTok and what is considered “viral” on TikTok will help you get there.
In this blog, Ignite Visibility’s Senior Social Media Strategist, Josh Rohr, will look into what it means to be viral on TikTok and some ideas to help you maximize your reach will share tips to TikTok virality and unlock strategies to significantly grow your audience and engagement.
What You’ll Learn
- Cracking the Code: TikTok Algorithm Explained
- Is It That Easy to Go Viral on TikTok?
- 9 Steps to Go Viral on TikTok
- FAQs
My Expert Opinion on How to Go Viral on TikTok
TikTok is one of the most increasingly popular video streaming apps today, and it’s perfect for connecting to younger audiences. As of December 2024, TikTok has around 2.5 billion monthly visits with nearly a billion unique monthly visits. The bulk of these visitors are women under 30. In fact, TikTok has more Gen Z visitors than Instagram!
This platform poses a lot of opportunities, but what does it even mean to go viral? Let’s take a look at the numbers. Most people now say that getting 100,000 views quickly means you went viral, but that number could be higher or lower. It really comes down to the number of views that lead to more conversions on your end—you could have all the views in the world, but they won’t count unless you’re reaching the right people in your target audience.
You should also take into consideration other engagement metrics such as shares, comments, and likes. That means that people are not only seeing your content but also consuming and engaging with it. So, making your content viral on TikTok is crucial, but you must ensure your content also converts.
Generally, to get your content out there, I recommend making your content funny and entertaining, as humorous content appeals to most users on that platform. You should focus on creating content that feels authentic to your niche. The content that goes viral is the content that resonates with the people in your target market.
Consider the types of video content that do best in your industry. You should also make content that naturally encourages people to comment on it, whether those comments are good or bad (although you should always avoid offensive and purposefully controversial content).
Cracking the Code: TikTok Algorithm Explained
So, how does the TikTok algorithm work? Explaining the TikTok algorithm has many dimensions.
According to TikTok, its algorithm recommends content similar to videos you’ve watched, shared, or liked. Other factors include who you follow, the content you create, your account demographics, and the content in the video. Based on all this data crunching, TikTok shows you content from accounts you follow and don’t.
Ranking Factors on TikTok
The concept of “going viral” means your content needs to first do well with a smaller group of users that TikTok believes is a good sample based on the topics in the video.
One thing the algorithm doesn’t do is factor in the TikTok account’s follower count or prior engagement numbers; instead, the platform made engagement frequency a major factor that can influence whether a video goes viral on TikTok.
Engagement frequency refers to how often users interact with a video, which indicates to the algorithm that the content is truly engaging to viewers. So, even after a video has sat on the platform for several months, the algorithm may decide to rank it higher after a period of dynamic re-evaluation of engagement.
Other ranking factors for TikTok include completion rate, trending audio, keyword usage, and overall video quality.
Also, today, TikTok categorizes videos into specific target niches to connect with particular audiences. In the process, the platform further ensures its videos reach the right users based on what kinds of content they want to see.
The TikTok Algorithm Explained: Embracing Interactivity and Connection
I’ve mentioned that TikTok really values the connection between brands and consumers, and one of the best ways to create that connection is through TikTok’s interactive features.
Using tools such as polls, Q&A stickers, and live streams will help to curate that connection and build a bond that will significantly increase viewer engagement. The more that your audience engages with your content, the better. This will show TikTok that your content is something people want to see and encourage the algorithm to push it out to other users interested in the same things.
You can take interactivity one step further by encouraging your followers to create user-generated content. Develop challenges or encourage duets that foster community participation, improve that connection between brand and consumer, and increase your visibility across the app.
Other Ways to Go Viral on TikTok
- Heating: Videos hand-picked by TikTok employees to gain an extra boost. However, this only applies to influencers.
- Brand Chem: TikTok is focusing less on telling people what they want to see and more on building a collaborative environment where creators and communities can have more say in what resonates with them. As part of the Brand Chem movement, TikTok is focusing on three signals:
- Brand Fusion: the idea that brands gain new purpose when they become more responsive toward their consumers
Identity Osmosis: the concept that brands will start to integrate their consumers’ values into their brand identities - Creative Catalysts: the tools marketers need to build communities and learn from creators to feel more inspired to take creative risks
If you can align your content with these three signals, it will be easier to draw attention on the app.
Is It That Easy to Go Viral on TikTok?
You may wonder whether going viral on TikTok is easy, but the answer depends on numerous factors, including your industry.
The most popular industries might not be what you would expect, either. According to recent data, the industries that tend to get the most engagement in 2024 include:
- Sports
- Non-profits
- Higher Education
- Media
- Travel
Meanwhile, on the lower end of engagement is:
- Tech and Software
- Fashion
- Health & Beauty
- Retail
- Food & Beverage
- Home Decor
- Financial Services
Ultimately, the more engaging your content, the better your chance of going viral on TikTok.
TikTok tends to favor new creators who develop highly engaging content that attracts lots of views, shares, likes, and comments. This type of content is more likely to show up on users’ “For You” pages. As such, you have a good chance of reaching wide audiences.
By creating consistently good content that keeps viewers watching and interacting, you’ll be able to build your presence on TikTok and figure out what works and what doesn’t.
9 Steps to Go Viral on TikTok
Step 1: Pick a Topic That Has a Lot of Value
Starting off your path to viral on TikTok begins with choosing a topic. You’ve only got a few seconds to capture users’ attention, although they spend around 54 minutes daily on the app.
Your message needs to be clear from the beginning to hook those scrollers. Be sure to set the tone and theme of the video within the first 3 seconds so your audience will understand what they’re watching.
The topic could be something evergreen or trending hot topic. Your choice depends on your audience, their needs, and your solutions. It needs to be relevant to your audience and deliver value.
Here are a few examples of TikTok videos for different industries:
- Engage Gen Z in trade recruitment: Trades need new recruits, and TikTok is a great place to engage Gen Z, who are 1.4x more likely than other users to discover new brands on the platform. It’s a fun way to clear up myths about working in trades with great visuals and specifics about earning power.
- Highlight how products are made: An “origin” video could be your ticket to going viral. If you have a unique product or manufacturing process, turn it into a short video and showcase the features.
- Spotlight your customers: Making a video about your customers and their success can be a very compelling story. It doesn’t look like an “ad” but rather a conversation about how your company helped them thrive.
If considering hot topics, TikTok is a great place for lively discussion. It’s a site that many look to for news and information. If something is trending relevant to your business and customers, you should capitalize on this.
Step 2: Keep the Video Short
TikTok videos can be as short as 15 seconds and up to 10 minutes long. Analysis of internal data from TikTok revealed that 24 to 31 seconds was the optimal time. While you have more time, remember that attention spans are short, so 30 seconds is the sweet spot.
TikTok looks at the average length of watch time compared to the length of the entire video to determine its level of quality. For instance, people are likelier to watch 8 seconds of a 10-second video than 48 seconds of a 60-second video.
The higher your watch time, the more likes you’ll receive, and the higher your chance of your video going viral.
Short-form videos give you the creative freedom to publish factual, relatable videos that get right to the point without needing to produce more in-depth content.
Step 3: Hold Viewer’s Interest
With so much media around us to consume, there’s always competition for attention. TikTok has figured out a way to hold interests with visual experiences. Video is what people spend hours consuming—averaging 17 hours per week. It’s become the key media for learning and discovery, with 96% of people watching an explainer video on a product or service. Additionally, 89% of people said that viewing a video convinced them to make a purchase.
These are the results you want to realize. It all starts with getting the visual elements of the post right. Thankfully, the platform offers a wide range of in-app effects and customization options to make content more visually stimulating.
Let’s do a quick rundown of some of the effects that you can use to modify your videos post-recording:
- Effect House: This platform is for AR (augmented reality) effects, interaction and visual scripting tools, and segmentation for hair, landscapes, and clothing.
- Text on videos: Add a text layer to the video to let viewers get the message immediately.
- Visual: With this effect, you can alter the look and feel of your video by adding stars, rain, or bubbles.
- Stickers and GIFs: Pin these to an object in the video, and it moves around the frame attached to it. As it gets closer to the camera, it grows in size.
- Jump cuts: This effect breaks a shot into two parts by adding a transition that appears like an abrupt movement in time. They can be dramatic and dynamic.
- Transition: You use this effect to cut quickly between two shots. Several options include turn-off TV (mimics how a TV turns off) or scrolling.
- Split: You can use it to split your videos into up to 9-frame collages.
- Time: If you want to create time-warp effects, this feature allows you to reverse, repeat, or slow-mo your videos.
Try to incorporate at least one, depending on the intent of your content.
Another key strategy is to continually make your videos short and grab users’ attention within the first few seconds. Remember, people are consistently scrolling through and browsing all types of content on this platform, so you’ll want to work to stand apart.
For instance, you can use a funny or otherwise attention-grabbing image to start off your video, which will keep people intrigued once they land on the video. From there, keep your videos concise and engaging to ensure viewers watch to the end, with a call-to-action that encourages viewers to continue their journey with your brand.
Step 4: Use Suggestive Actions
Higher engagement is your fast track to the “For You” page and is one of the metrics you need to look at on TikTok.
With such a high volume of users, how can you build a strong engagement rate and drive your viewers to act?
Tell stories! It’s like any medium. You want to tell good, meaningful stories to your audience without being pushy or salesy.
Playlists: TikTok also gives creators access to storytelling formats to connect with users through powerful serial narratives. By turning your content into a continuous series, you can keep users coming back to your content with each new chapter, with the potential of turning several of these videos viral. People coming to your series in the middle of it could also wind up wanting to go back to the beginning, restoring older videos in your series and potentially helping them get the spotlight again.
Start Discussions: You should also cater to TikTok’s prioritization of community, either starting new discussions with your content or joining existing ones, which you can easily do using Stitch and Duet features to fuse your content with existing videos.
Q&A Feature: Another way to do this is by using the app’s Q&A feature, which allows you to reply to user questions directly with a video.
Hashtags: Many use hashtag challenges to promote their brand. This can drive enormous engagement since it puts the power in the users’ hands. You’d be giving followers a task to perform in a video using the hashtag, which could cause your original TikTok video to blow up.
One way to find trending ones that could relate to your video is by visiting the Discover page. However, the most popular hashtags also have the most competition. Keep these tips in mind when choosing hashtags:
- Study your audience’s hashtag usage.
- Ensure the phrase relates to your brand, product, or service.
- Create a branded hashtag.
- Use a hashtag generator tool.
- Try the TikTok search tool to discover emerging hashtags.
Step 5: Follow the Trends
The next lesson on how to go viral on TikTok in 2023 is following the trends. We’ve just discussed using the Discovery page and searching for hashtags. Those are in-the-moment trends that you can leverage. Almost every day, new post trends use themes, which you can find by staying active on the app.
Some big-picture trends of note include:
- Feature real people in videos to capture authenticity, so stock videos should be a last resort.
- Focus on lifestyle inspiration related to your brand and audience because this platform and its creators have influence. Some hashtags to consider are #MyJourney, #SlowLiving, or #DigitalNomad.
- Spark joy in your videos by sharing ideas and offering solutions. Creating this feeling matters, as 92% of users said they felt a positive emotion from viewing videos, which resulted in an off-platform action.
- Follow trending sounds and audio, such as music to use as soundtracks to your videos based on the top songs on the Tokchart. Complementing visuals with sound is crucial; you can find what’s hot right now in the Creative Center.
- Look for or initiate trending industry challenges to encourage user engagement, including the development of user-generated content that you could then repurpose for other social media marketing efforts.
- Take advantage of TikTok’s Creator Rewards Program, which rewards creators with increased revenue if they post high-quality content on a regular basis.
- Tell stories in a series of videos with TikTok’s Story format, which can help you create multiple short videos that connect with users more consistently.
- Use popular hashtags in your niche that engage your target market most, which you can find by entering industry-related queries in TikTok’s search engine.
Certain social media tools can also help you identify TikTok trends in your industry.
Step 6: Engage With Your Audience
While views are one of the most critical elements of going viral on TikTok, it’s not all that matters.
Engagement via likes, comments, and shares lets the app know viewers enjoy your content, and this will generate more views. TikTok even has a unique feature that allows you to reply to a comment with a video instead of a standard reply.
Up in engagement by:
- Asking for comments by posing questions to the audience and seeking their opinions
- Leaving questions unanswered in the video and requesting answers
- Ending with a strong call to action (CTA) that prompts people to click (e.g., offers, promotions, more content to discover)
- Leaving in random mistakes that people will spot and respond to, which makes the video feel more authentic, too
- Taking advantage of TikTok Live, which will connect with users more directly through livestreams, which you can use to conduct Q&As to interact with audiences as you stream. Live streaming could also feature distinct personalities from your team to give your brand a friendly, personable face.
Step 7: Produce Share-Worthy Content
The cardinal rule of how to go viral on TikTok is with share-worthy content. If users don’t share it, it has little chance of catching a wider audience. These are a few themes to consider that are winners on the platform:
- Funny and entertaining: Lean on this theme to get people to tag their friends and share so it becomes viral.
- Education: Learning on TikTok is a big thing! In fact, 63% of Gen Z use it to learn something. This could be a great angle for your brand to deliver important information to an audience that’s looking for it on the platform.
- Inspiration: TikTok has always been a site for inspiration, from fashion to health to solving problems. Any viral video should have a touch of inspiration.
- Using familiar content formats: TikTok videos can also be a great way to animate a listicle or FAQ on a topic. It could be very share-worthy if it’s engaging and visually interesting.
- Authenticity: Your content should also come across as consistently authentic and “real.” Using a lot of seemingly AI-generated or otherwise uninspired, generic content will keep you down, while coming up with unique, fresh, and exciting TikTok ideas to go viral will likely help you succeed. With so much content out there, authenticity is essential in helping differentiate you.
Step 8: Collaborate With Others
TikTok’s design makes it ideal for collaborations with creators or other companies. By working with others, you can expand your reach. A good partnership creates value for all. Do your research on possible creators and look at existing relationships you have with other brands.
In working with creators, it’s a good idea to target those who have similar follower numbers and would resonate with your audience. A high-number influencer that knows nothing about your industry isn’t likely a good partner.
TikTok Pulse: In addition to partnerships with creators, you can also explore TikTok Pulse, which will place your ads in popular videos to supplement them. This tool will ultimately help you reach people who might not see your own videos.
One good example of a brand collaboration was between influencer, Carly Minnick, and shoe brand, Hey Dude. In this special partnership, Carly showed off her love of the comfortable shoe to her over 48,000 followers. One quick click on the video and viewers were brought directly to the Hey Dude website to purchase the same shoes as their favorite creator.
Another great example is the collaboration between Chipotle and Zach King, which showcased the power of influencer marketing as one of the best ways to go viral on TikTok. This particular campaign helped promote a Halloween special with Chipotle’s #Boorito challenge, which gave discounts to people who went in costume to Chipotle restaurants. Not only did this incorporate an effective influencer partnership to help the challenge go viral, but it also encouraged the creation of user-generated content among users.
Also, think outside of influencers—consider starting challenges and encouraging all types of uses to develop user-generated content (UGC) connected to your brand and offerings. For instance, you can encourage users to submit videos showing the creative ways they use your offerings in exchange for a potential freebie or discount.
Step 9: Stay Consistent
Finally, consistency is vital to growing on social media platforms. You should consistently post and keep your videos in line with your brand. The more you post, the more traction you can gain. However, don’t go with volume over quality. Consider assets you can repurpose for TikTok to keep your posts regular.
Common Myths About How to Go Viral on TikTok
Before you start making connections and planning out content, let’s talk about some of the most common myths that surround going viral on TikTok.
Myth: Only big accounts can go viral.
Reality: False! This is a common misconception that has been debunked over and over again. In fact, so many creators love TikTok because anyone can go viral. TikTok actually favors new and engaging content from up-and-coming creators (and regular TikTok users!) over big brands and other popular accounts. That’s part of what makes TikTok so different from other social media platforms.
Myth: More hashtags = more views.
Reality: False! Hashtags definitely help, but its the quality of your content that will get you viewers. The more you produce great content, the more viewers will engage with it. It’s that engagement that will encourage the algorithm to continue to push our your views.
Myth: TikTok shadowbans viral videos.
Reality: False! TikTok’s algorithm favors videos that are making an influence. It’s their content moderation and community guidelines that affect visibility, not their desire to stop viral videos.
FAQs: How to Go Viral on TikTok
1. Why should my brand worry about going viral on TikTok?
TikTok is the fastest-growing social media app in the world and I don’t see its popularity dying down anytime soon!
With over 800 million users worldwide, it’s the perfect way to grab people’s attention, increase brand awareness, find new customers, and connect with influencers who may be interested in supporting your brand.
2. What is your biggest tip on going viral on TikTok?
Pick a topic that is popular! There are a lot of trends on TikTok so find one that is popular and create your content around that trend.
3. How long should a TikTok be to go viral?
You might wonder, How long should a TikTok be to go viral? The appeal of TikTok is that it’s short! So keep your video to less than 30 seconds. Grab your audience’s attention and get your point across quickly so that they consume your content but don’t stop scrolling for long.
4. Are there specific times or days that are best for posting on TikTok?
According to Sprout Social analytics, the best days and times to post on TikTok are:
- Tuesdays from 2 to 6 p.m.
- Wednesdays from 2 to 5 p.m.
- Thursdays from 3 to 5 p.m.
Look at your analytics on engagement to get more specific information.
5. Do I need professional equipment to create viral content on TikTok?
The latest camera phones can create high-quality videos, and TikTok’s editing and effects platform makes it easy to produce. You should consider getting some professional lighting and a tripod.
6. Should I jump on every TikTok trend to go viral?
There could be a risk if the trend isn’t relevant to your audience, so they ignore the content. Don’t create content to be trendy. Instead, use a trend if it has meaning to who you target.
7. What is considered viral on TikTok?
You might also ask about how many views to go viral. The definition of “viral” on TikTok varies, depending on who you ask. Generally, anywhere in the tens of thousands of views qualifies as a viral video, but the number will ultimately depend on engagement in your industry and your own goals.
How to Go Viral on TikTok With Help From Ignite Visibility
There’s much to consider in how to make a TikTok go viral. It requires strategy, content creation, and execution.
Social media can be a lot to manage, but luckily for you, we’re experts. Many brands trust us to help them go viral, build their following, and increase engagement. We’ll assist with everything from social media to content marketing to maximize your brand’s online reach with high-quality video content and more.
With Ignite Visibility backing you, you can:
- Incorporate some of the best TikTok ideas to go viral
- Identify trends in your industry to target, including hashtags and challenges
- Determine your target audience
- Create high-quality video content that resonates with viewers
- Consistently post content that’s likely to go viral
- And more!
We specialize in TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and more! Meet with one of our social media experts now to learn more.
