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In January 2022 I embarked on a 30-day TikTok growth challenge. After playing around with TikTok a little bit in late 2021 I decided it was time to take TikTok seriously. It is only through committing properly I would be able to decide whether TikTok was a shiny object trying to distract me or a platform that could genuinely support marketing my business (I’m a business and marketing strategist for coaches, consultants and online service providers). Keep on reading to find out how my 30-day TiikTok growth challenge went.
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What is TikTok?
I’m hoping if you have landed on this blog post you are interested in TikTok for your own business and so know what TikTok is, but just incase this was sent to you let me quickly explain what TikTok is. TikTok is a social media platform that focuses on short-form video content. It was originally created in 2016, was acquired by Musical.ly in 2017 and by the end of 2021 Intelligent Insider named TikTok the third largest worldwide social media network.
My use of TikTok before the 30-day TikTok growth challenge
Unlike some people who use a 30-day TikTok growth challenge when they first open their account I already had my account. I opened my account back in 2020. The first public post was on the 1st September 2020. I then didn’t post for nearly the entire year with the nest post being 30 August 2021. Then from September to December 2021 I dabbled and would take a few of my Instagram Reels and repurpose them on TikTok.
Why I decided to do a TikTok 30 day growth challenge
As I mentioned earlier at the end of 2021 TikTok was considered the third largest worldwide social media network. New social media platforms are constantly being introduced and disappearing and as a marketing strategist, rather than a social media strategist, I try not to get too distracted by all the new platforms popping up. However, TikTok’s growth meant I could no longer ignore it. At the time I didn’t have any clients using TikTok but I knew it should be something I was including as an option when putting strategies together and therefore I needed some first-hand experience.
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How the 30 day TikTok growth challenge work
The challenge was simple. To post a minimum of 1 post per day for 30 days. If you’ve read any other 30-day TikTok growth challenge posts you might have seen people talking about posting a minimum of 3 times a day. However, this felt totally unrealistic for me at the beginning. At the time I felt 1 video per week was something I could commit to do and would also allow me to get a feel for whether TikTok was a good platform for me to use in the future or not.
LESSONS I LEARNT FROM MY 30-DAY TIKTOK GROWTH CHALLENGE
Lesson 1: Batching is key
I’ve always been a big fan of batching (it played a central part of me being consistent with my content when I had a full-time marketing job) but as I was adding TikTok onto an already fairly busy content creation schedule already I knew that batching was key. I set aside 1 day per week to record the videos and then usually would edit and post on the day.
Lesson 2: The relationship between TikTok Videos and Instagram Reels
It is no secret that Instagram created Reels to compete with TikTok and on the surface they look the same. They are both short-form, portrait videos. Previously I had been repurposing my Instagram Reels for TiktTok videos so I thought if I was making 7 videos a week for TikTok it made sense to repurpose them to use for Instagram Reels. What is interesting is although the formats are similar, because the platforms are different and have their own language and feel, I didn’t end up repurposing my TikTok videos as much as expected. And for those that I did repurpose there was no correlation between how well a video performed on TikTok and how well it performed on Instagram.
Want to know more about Instagram Reels? I’ve got a few other blog posts to help you out:
Lesson 3: Trending Sounds
One of the things that draws business owners to TikTok is the idea of going viral. There are stories from the small business (product) world where a video has gone viral overnight and they’ve woken up to endless orders. This is because no matter the size of your account you can have one video that goes viral, and in many cases that is to do with using a trending sound.
As a result of that there is a big focus on using trending sounds. There are accounts within TikTok that will be trying to highlight trending sounds early and encouraging you to make videos using them. Also TikTok once a week will actually share what the big trends of the week are.
Another way to find trending sounds is to scroll. If you spend a few minutes scrolling you can usually pretty quickly find a few trending sounds that clearly are popular at the moment.
Lesson 4: Miming is hard work
Whilst you can create videos using your own voice, miming is big on TikTok. This could be miming to songs or sound clips of other people speaking. The latter I found so difficult. I could spend 5-10 takes to mime a 7-15 second video. I realised it was much more time-efficient for me to focusing on miming to songs, which I could do in less takes.
Lesson 5: Transitions
Another thing that is big on TikTok is transitions. There are people in the makeup world that do amazing transitions, but even for the average creator transitions play a role. Transitions helped to keep people interested in your video (longer watch time) and in some cases even watch again as they try and work the transition out. This is all great for your engagement so where possible adding in some transitions is great. It took me a few weeks into my challenge to start using transitions (after watching some tutorials). Again I found this at times to be very time consuming for mixed results.
Here is a transition video that I loved (I mean I’m a sucker for a bit of Rihanna anyway)
@charellegriffith Comment if 2022 is going to be your year! #coachforsolopreneurs #growyourbusiness2022#femalebusinessmentor#femalebusinesscoach#businesscoachuk ♬ original sound – Eys Hombre
Lesson 6: Business account versus Creator account
When I first started the challenge I had a creator account. However, early on I switched to a business account. I wanted to be able to have a link in my bio (so that I could be driving people to my newsletter, website etc), but for this you needed a business account or over 1,000 followers on a Creator account. As a result, I switched the business but then all of the songs I wanted to use were unavailable. The limitations on the music was too much for me so I switched back to a Creator account and am dreaming of the day when I hit 1,000 followers and can add the link into my bio (and also go live).
Lesson 7: The relationship between time put into a video and performance don’t always match
One of the things I found really interesting about TikTok is that sometimes the video you quickly made would perform better than the ones you spent ages planning, recording and editing.
Lesson 8: TikTok is addictive
I really try to use social media for business and not personal consumption, but there is no doubt TikTok sucked me in. I would start scrolling to find trending sounds and then an hour would pass and I wouldn’t even realise. If you aren’t on the platform and considering using it for your business then be warned it will try and suck you in!
Lesson 9: Hooks
Hooks are essential in TikTok. You need to stop people scrolling and ensure they stay on your video and you need to have enticing covers on your videos so when people are scrolling through your profile they decide to click on it. Naturally, I’m not a very clickbait marketer. I try to steer away from making over-dramatic statements, big promises and guarantees. I know this will have hindered my performance on the app.
The results
Throughout the whole 30-day TikTok growth challenge I tracked my followers and likes.
4th January – 30 followers and 132 likes
2nd February – 75 followers and 388 likes
My growth was minimal to say the least and I didn’t have a viral video (to date I’ve still only had 1 video get past the 1,000 views mark).
TikTok definitely didn’t change my business in 2022, but for every massive success story there are hundreds of business owners who have experiences just like mine but don’t share it – which is why I wanted to write this blog post whether it worked amazingly or not.
My future on TikTok?
The more time I spent in TikTok the more it became clear that one post per day is not classed as consistent. Most people are advising you to post between 3 – 5 posts and I could understand why. The fact is that TikTok doesn’t behave like other platforms and you really do need to experiment with your content. When you are posting once a day you are limited by the amount of experimenting you can do. The more videos you post the more you can experiment and the more data you have to see what videos work and which ones don’t.
Towards the end of the challenge I could start to see growth both in views and followers. For a while all of my videos were stuck around getting 150 views within 24 hours, then for no apparent reason all videos seemed to get around 230 views per 24 hours. It was as if TikTok makes decisions about how much it pushes you out on the For You page and that makes a massive difference.
Also, creating TikTok videos forced me to really think about my core messages. Short-form video makes you succinct. You are limited to a max of 3 minutes (but in most cases my videos were less than 30 seconds) and then you only have 150 characters for your caption. That skill of focusing on the most important information is very different to the rest of the content I create since I focus on providing in-depth blog posts (You can check them all out at www.charellegriffith.com/blog) and then fairly long captions/posts on Instagram and LinkedIn. It was a major shift for me and not something that comes natural, but as time has gone by I started to get more ideas and I want to try them out.
As a result, I decided I would continue on my TikTok growth journey. I decided for the whole of February (Which slightly overlapped with the end of this 30 day growth challenge) I would post 2 posts per day and then review on the 1st March.
If you want to find out how my February TikTok growth challenge goes be sure to sign up to my mailing list as I’ll be sharing all with my subscribers.
That’s it! You now know all about my 30-day tiktok growth challenge
Whilst TikTok didn’t blow up my business I have loved the experience of doing the challenge, and as hopefully you can tell I learnt a lot.
If you are already on TikTok come and follow me – my handle is @charellegriffith
If you are already on TikTok I would love to hear your experience. Let me know in the comments below.
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I’m a Chartered Marketer, with a decade of professional marketing experience who now spends my days supporting solo coaches, consultants and online service provider to improve their marketing, sign dream clients and ultimately build a business they love and that pays them properly.
With more options that ever to market your business you need to be strategic about using your time, energy, and possibly money. That’s why I create integrated marketing strategies that focus on attracting and signing dream clients (and can be managed by one person).
You can check out all of my services here.
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