Some tricks about the Algorithm I learned along the way

I really like this kind of posts where we share what can we do to have an extra chance with the algorithm. So I’ll give my contribution in here with my 1 year experience in the MEME / gaming niche, but could apply to others as well.

1 - Comments

  • getting comments do help your views grow

  • stating an opinion gets a lot of comments (not necessarily controversial)

  • specially in comedy/memes, sometimes is great to leave a detail somewhere on the video for someone to point it out. People love to point something they think only they saw in the comments such as a detail in the background. (Sometimes I even leave some obvious jokes out of the video just so people catch on and comment it themselves)

  • a good direction is making your video thinking about what your comments would be like, if people can ADD something to it.

2 - Video content

  • tiktok needs to know what is your target audience. For that, you need to leave “clues” for it to follow, and hashtags are good at that

  • some say that the less hashtags the better and I agree. Try to focus on the hashtags of your niche and the theme of the video

  • what you say and write in the video will also be noticed by the algorithm

  • shorter videos are harder to go viral

  • following sound trends do help

  • on tiktok news get old very fast. If your niche has a lot of news/updates, it’s better to post about it asap even if it’s not perfect. 5 days later your video won’t perform as good as it would if it was posted sooner. This is also a way to get a lot of views since the “theme” of your video is getting engagement

  • I need to know what your video is about on the first second. That doesn’t mean having a title exactly, since it might break the flow. But try to call viewers attention right away to what you’re doing

3 - Followers

  • they’re not guaranteed views since Tiktok relies on the FYP and not the following tab. BUT they are important since they represent your niche.

  • Tiktok will first test your video to 200 people. You need to reach 10% to 25% of likes for it to keep going, along with retention rate, saves comments etc.

  • if you are “recognizable” in all of your videos (you show your face or keep a visual pattern/editing style) I feel like followers help since when they recognize you they tend to stay.

  • THATS WHY you need to stick to your niche. If tiktok pulls your video to some of your followers and they scroll away, you will lose views.

  • If I always post gameplays and suddenly post cooking, the video will not appeal to my followers and tiktok will understand the video is bad. If you open another account for cooking tho, the same video could do well with the right audience.

  • with this in mind, if you went viral with a certain type of content and now are getting low views, try watching your videos that performed well and see what you can repeat from it

Oof that’s all I could remember I think. Of course nothing is guaranteed, it’s only based on experience. Good luck with your videos everyone