How to Get Real TikTok Followers

TikTok is one of the most popular and fastest-growing platforms, and it provides a direct line of communication between companies and their target audience. That’s why many companies work to build a wide fan base on TikTok through which they market their products and services, spread their brand, and strengthen their relationships with their customers.

Building a wide fan base with lots of followers doesn’t happen overnight and doesn’t happen through random posting without a solid plan — it requires effort, organized work, and consistency in performance and content quality.

Whether you’re an independent content creator or a company offering products and services, you need to grow your TikTok followers to see real results from successful marketing on this platform.

In this article we’ll cover what you should do and what you should avoid to expand your follower base on TikTok, and encourage real people to press the Follow button.

12 Tips to Grow Your TikTok Followers

TikTok’s home screen is split into the For You page — which contains the content TikTok’s algorithm ranks for the user and matches the content that catches their attention and they usually follow — and the Following page, which shows the user only the content of the accounts they follow.

Here the importance of growing followers on this platform stands out: it increases content reach to a larger number of followers on the Following page and increases the likelihood of this content going viral so it starts to appear to users on the For You page — and thus the content reaching a wider scope and being put in front of more potential followers.

Here’s a series of practices and strategies you should follow to achieve these results:

1: Knowing the Target Audience

TikTok has millions of users of various ages, countries, and interests, so it’s impossible to make content that grabs the attention of all these segments. We first have to know the target audience and the type of content that catches their eyes to be able to make content that gets the desired engagement from them.

There are several information sources that can be used to try to understand the target audience on TikTok:

• Using TikTok Analytics gives an idea of followers’ ages, gender, and countries. Is the majority of followers from the new generation (Gen Z)? Or from older generations?
• Taking a look at competing companies in the same industry and getting an idea of the content forms that get engagement from their followers.
• Analyzing the various content pieces and videos posted in the past, identifying the types that performed better and got a higher share of audience likes, and finding the common factors among them that made them stand out from others.
• Leveraging followers on other social media platforms — by asking questions about the type of content they want to see on TikTok in the form of a poll such as Instagram Polls and more.

TikTok is in a state of constant motion and audience preferences are constantly changing. Understanding the target audience isn’t a simple operation — it’s subject to trial and error. So there’s no harm in testing different forms of content to find the best and most accepted by audiences.

2: Participating in Challenges and Trends

Challenges and trends are a core element of TikTok content. They appear suddenly and reap great popularity for a period of time and then fade. Discovering them early and participating in them by riding the wave of their temporary popularity has a significant impact on appearing on users’ For You pages and getting wider reach and gaining many new followers.

To discover these trends, you have to stay up to date with everything new on the For You page and monitor the trending content continuously. You can also make use of the platform’s search bar to see the latest news and topics and discover the most trending among them, in addition to monitoring the influencers audiences love — since they’re usually the first to participate in these trends, and sometimes even the ones who start them.

Participating in trends is excellent, but it must fit the company’s image and identity naturally. Participating in every trending challenge — the appropriate and the inappropriate — can harm the company’s image and seriousness. So you have to pick the most suitable ones, most aligned with the company’s values, principles, and field.

Finally, companies can create their own challenges — by preparing a hashtag (#) specific to these challenges and encouraging users to participate in them, and working with some popular influencers to participate as well. All of that can open the doors to gaining more followers.

3: Making High-Quality Content

What sets TikTok apart from others is the significant organic reach on it, even for accounts that don’t have a large number of followers. Everyone has a chance to post videos that get wide traction and go viral on the For You page. The secret lies in preparing good content that stirs viewers’ emotions and makes them feel a connection with it.

Continuous posting also plays a big role in going viral and appearing on users’ home pages. Luck and pure chance play a significant role in the spread of some videos and their turning into a trend, so the more content you have and the greater the number of videos, the greater your chances of gaining this sudden popularity.

If you’re one of those who make videos by filming yourself, make them high-quality videos — buy a ring light and spend some money on a professional camera. The likelihood of viewer engagement with this type of video grows as the quality and effort put into preparing it grows.

Another practice followed in preparing content is creating a series of videos centered on a certain idea or story — like “How to” videos, or “That feeling when,” and other trending ideas. These videos capture viewers’ attention and put them in a state of anticipation for the next video, and they always come back for more.

These series can start from one of the videos where the content creator noticed followers loved the idea and want to see more of it. The most important thing when preparing these series is consistency in the same tone and style of speech or humor, and consistent posting on a suitable schedule. And if we notice a slump in engagement with one of the series, there’s no harm in adjusting it or stopping it and moving to a new idea.

4: Collaborating With Influencers and Content Creators

There are thousands of beloved influencers on TikTok, each with a wide fan base. Working with these influencers to have them promote a company’s brand opens the way to gaining many new followers. The most important point is finding influencers whose content matches what the company offers, at a level suitable for the budget the company will spend on this promotion.

As for content creators, TikTok has introduced to the social media world the Duet feature, which allows two content creators to collaborate and appear in a live broadcast side by side for the followers of each creator to watch and engage with through likes and comments.

These duos open the door for both creators to gain more followers and expand outside the limited follower circle of each. They can also become the reason for long-term friendship and mutual-benefit relationships between them. The essence of success in these duos is that they take place between creators of comparable level with similar content, whose follower bases share common interests, and that they happen with a clear, prior agreement on each side’s responsibilities — and that followers feel the authenticity and spontaneity when they see this collaboration between the creators.

Among the features TikTok also offers is Stitch, where a user cuts out part of another creator’s video and uses it in their own content — as long as that creator has enabled the option for their videos to be used by others in their account’s Privacy Settings. This feature benefits both sides and reaps more engagement from followers.

5: Using Hashtags (#)

The hashtag is an important tool for boosting content visibility and its findability by users — not just a suffix put in the video description. What matters is using hashtags suited to the type of content being posted, and staying away from trying to game the TikTok algorithm by putting a huge number of hashtags that don’t match the content and that the viewer sees as sheer spam. Five hashtags per post is more than enough for the purpose.

To discover the most trending hashtags, TikTok helps the user with that — as soon as (#) is typed in the content description, several options are suggested in a dropdown of the most popular hashtags, and you can choose among them in line with the post’s content.

As we mentioned earlier, a company can also create its own branded hashtag — putting the company’s own signature on it, as a short phrase that represents the company’s brand, and encouraging followers to use it in their content so they become promotional ambassadors for it and to increase reach to a larger number of followers’ home pages.

6: Posting at the Right Time

Regarding the TikTok algorithm, it’s believed that videos that get fast engagement in the first hours after posting are promoted to a wider scope of users. So preparing high-quality content backed by posting at the right time of day gives videos an initial push toward going viral and appearing on users’ pages.

The right time is the time when the majority of followers are active on the platform. To find that time, you can use TikTok Analytics, which becomes available to the user when they convert their account to a professional account (TikTok Pro Account). This tool provides plenty of data and measures about the content’s performance over the past 28 days.

By going to the Followers section in the analytics tool and scrolling down to Follower Activity, this section provides several pieces of information about followers and the countries they live in and the times they’re active — helping us choose the best posting time. Note that the time the tool provides is in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time, so this offset must be taken into account.

It can also be said that there’s no harm in running some experiments and posting videos at different times of day, and identifying the time that generates the best levels of early engagement from followers.

7: Adding Explanatory Text to Videos

This practice, despite its simplicity, takes content on TikTok to another level of professionalism — and what’s meant here is adding what people say in the video as text (like subtitles in films).

Among the benefits of this practice is that it makes videos watchable by people with hearing issues or difficulty understanding speech — thus attracting a wider scope of audiences. Plus, this text also makes the content easier to find in search on the TikTok platform (TikTok SEO).

The most important thing when adding this text is that it’s clear and easy to read using fonts and colors that are clear to the eye and don’t clash with the background — and it’s also essential that its timing be precisely synced with the audio in the video.

8: Using Trending Sounds and Music in Videos

Sounds and music in videos are a large part of the TikTok platform’s culture and represent a wide slice of content on it — which sometimes includes challenges and dances. They make videos more engaging for followers and give them a chance to go viral and appear to users on their For You pages.

To find the most trending sounds and music, you have to stay active on the For You page to watch the latest developments in this area, and monitor the popular influencers and content creators — since they’re the first to notice these trends. You can also use the platform’s search feature by going to the Video Editor, pressing (+), then Sounds to browse the latest trending audio.

When adding sounds and music to the video, the most important thing is that they match the content and don’t clash with it — using them just because they’re trending in an attempt to target users’ For You pages leaves a negative impression of the content creator. The level of the added sound should be appropriate and not drown out the video’s primary audio or the spoken word in it.

9: Promoting Videos on Other Social Media Platforms

Most people use more than one social media platform, and if a content creator has a follower base on a platform other than TikTok, it makes sense to benefit from it and repost the TikTok videos there — given the time and effort put into preparing them, and also so followers on those platforms know they have a TikTok account and are active there. All of that draws in more followers and traffic to the TikTok account.

The clearest examples are Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, which mirror TikTok’s short-video format. Some edits to the original video may be needed — such as the video’s length or the hashtags used — and most importantly removing the TikTok watermark from the video, since Instagram’s algorithm may not allow it, while on YouTube it could affect the video’s revenue and get it marked as demonetized.

10: Engaging With Followers

TikTok is more than just a platform for posting videos and trying to reach social-media fame — it’s an opportunity to build a community where the content creator engages with their followers. Nothing draws people’s interest more than a content creator who appreciates their followers and cares about their opinions and feedback.

This point stands out significantly for companies, by reposting User Generated Content in which they interact with the company’s brand — highlighting happy customers such as those who film themselves unboxing a new product, and other forms of content. It’s also important to give credit to the user when reposting their content and mention their account in the description.

11: Using a Call To Action (CTA) at the End of the Video

These calls are used to prompt users to watch other videos from the same series, or like and share the video, and press the Follow button.

The foundation of attracting followers is content quality — but there’s no harm in using a call at the end of the video to remind viewers. Especially if the creator adds their own signature touch and sense of humor to this call, it has some impact on gaining more followers.

12: Using Paid Ads

This option may not suit everyone since it’s somewhat costly — but if the budget is there, it’s one of the options that can be followed. It’s useful for getting around TikTok’s algorithm and putting your content in front of a wide global audience, and it allows strong targeting by specifying regions and demographic information to be targeted.

Why You Shouldn’t Buy Followers on TikTok

Getting thousands or millions of followers on TikTok isn’t easy — everyone knows that. It’s a process that requires time, patience, and effort in preparing content and consistency in posting. You may come across sites in some corner of the internet offering to sell you TikTok followers, and think it’s the initial push you need to kick off an influencer journey on this platform — but this is absolutely not the right choice.

Here are some of the results and consequences of buying followers on TikTok:

First: Low Engagement Levels With Content

Even if the follower count is high, in the end it’s just a number — they won’t watch the content or engage with it. And when a large follower count meets a low level of likes and engagement, it will be completely clear to the viewer that this account isn’t authentic and doesn’t deserve all those followers. That will negatively affect gaining new followers and future engagement levels.

So a small audience that engages with content and shares it is better than a massive number of followers who are of no use.

Second: TikTok’s Algorithm Won’t Get Your Content to the Home Page

And this effect follows from the low engagement level we mentioned — since low engagement with content signals to the algorithm that this content isn’t interesting, and so it won’t rank it for users on their For You pages.

Third: Buying Followers Is a Waste of Resources

The followers being bought are often bot accounts, not accounts of real people. Over time, TikTok will notice that these accounts aren’t real but bots, and they’ll be gradually removed — so buying these accounts is a waste of money and time.

Fourth: Buying Followers May Get Your Account Banned

So far it isn’t certain that buying followers is a violation of TikTok’s rules — but by contrast, there are other platforms (Instagram, for example) whose rules clearly state that buying fake followers is a violation of the Terms Of Service, and the account that buys followers is at risk of being banned.

If TikTok’s policy is updated in the future to become similar to Instagram’s policy, all TikTok accounts that buy followers will be at risk.

In Summary

Buying followers and trying to take shortcuts and roundabout methods won’t get you to your goals. Focus on making high-quality content and rely on the tips we’ve mentioned as much as possible — hard, continuous work rarely fails to get you to your goals.