After the BBC joined TikTok last week, journalists are taking to the social video sharing platform faster than you can say, “TikTok”. Always curious about what makes social media platforms Tik – sorry, that’s a bad one – we ran an experiment on our new Interhacktives TikTok account to find out what factors make for a successful Day in The Life TikTok.
Our aim? To try to get as many views as possible. We posted five TikToks over five days to try, with the aim of showing our audience, prospective City students what our lives are like. Here’s what we found makes a difference to the algorithm.
Show your face
Rather than hiding behind the camera, wannabe TikTokers should take centre stage, including clips with their face in within the first three seconds.
TikTok editor Freya Graham explained: “You probably want to have a face in there, so that the viewers have that more personal connection. I think that really helps.”
Veronica Montofani’s Day in The Life TikTok amassed 1028 views and started with a clip of her getting out of bed in the morning – including her face.
For extra TikTok algorithm karma points, Freya advises that a “face lit up with good lighting as well can also really help.” So dig out your ring light if you have one, or stand in front of a window.
Make clips short and snappy
You might spend hours sitting at your desk or on your sofa, but no one wants to see that. Instead, opt for clips of a couple of seconds to allow for variety and pick up the pace of your video, as Ollie did in his TikTok.
“So Ollie’s had loads of like shorter clips going through every single thing he did and picked up on lots of different details,” said Freya.
Rather than just doing one really long clip of him working, it was; I got a coffee and then I played some games, and then I did a bit of editing… That fast pace helps keep people hooked.”
Use ‘Day in The Life’ as a title
This one might seem obvious, but is really useful for helping your defined audience know straight away what they are watching and attract the right audience. We are hoping to attract undergraduate students wanting to find out about the masters course at City, so having words like ‘Day in the Life of a Student Journalist’ shows they are in the right place.
Don’t forget to add trending hashtags for Day in The Life videos too.
Use captions and voice overs
The TikTok algorithm rewards accessible videos and captions explaining what you’re doing are a must.
Freya explained that “it also helps the algorithm to understand what it’s about. So if you have captions and those captions, you have the words like student journalism London, it’s going to help to show the video to more people.”
Carla Abreu‘s video used captions and a “listening to” feature to show the podcasts she listened to while she went about her day.
The Interhacktives Day in The Life TikToks which attracted the most views used voiceovers to narrate the videos, including our best-performing one by Freya, with 1180 views.
Upload when people are on TikTok
You wouldn’t put on a theatre show when everyone is at work or school, so don’t throw your TikToks out into the void when no one is watching. Our TikToks were most successful when we uploaded in the early evenings rather than during the daytime when our target audiences weren’t online.
Did it work?
Okay, so maybe we didn’t go viral. But we did grow our followers by 66% and and profile views by 22%. We also learned a lot about how the TikTok algorithm works and will put in place all of our recommendations above when we make our next TikToks.
Olivia is a digital journalist studying Interactive Journalism at City, University of London. Interested in audience strategy, arts and culture and health.