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How To Grow On TikTok In 2025 - From Zero Followers - 811
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Are you ready to conquer TikTok in 2025? 🚀 In this episode, Brock Johnson shares a step-by-step guide to growing on TikTok, even if you're starting from scratch. Learn how to define your niche, create engaging content, and leverage the latest...
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Ctmobile.com how the heck do you even grow on TikTok? Well, don't worry, I'm about to tell you. And this is not just some random advice. This is all based on a study that analyzed over 80,000 TikTok accounts and over 1 million posts hey there, My name is Brock Johnson and in today's episode I'm going to share with you my eight steps to growing on TikTok in 2025. And this is coming from someone who grew on TikTok way back in 2019 to over 300,000 followers on TikTok. But but since then I've decided to start over. That's right. At the beginning of 2024 I started over on TikTok with a brand new fresh account. I have grown to 10,000 followers on TikTok in one year. I believe that TikTok is definitely here to stay. But the way that you grow on TikTok and the popular kinds of videos, what is most effective, what is actually working, is very different in 2025 than way back when I started on TikTok in 2019. Let's begin by addressing why I decided to start over on TikTok because it actually very clearly rel step number one for growing on TikTok. So back in 2019, TikTok was a brand new social media platform. It had just been rebranded from what was previously musically, and it wasn't really widely used or well known yet. But I saw that people were dancing and having fun on the app and if you know me, you know I like to dance around and have fun. And so I was like, sure, I'll join TikTok and I'll get in on some of this funny dance choreography. This was also at the time that I was a college football player, so a lot of my content and a lot of my life really just revolved around being a football player. So I decided to post a couple of videos just A couple silly goofy dancing videos, nothing too serious. Some of them were in the locker room, some of them were with my football pads on, some of them were with some of my football teammates. And a few days later I checked my TikTok and I had blown up. We're talking numerous videos with over a million views, one of them with over 10 million views. And this was at a time where TikTok was just a fraction of the size that it was today. And so within a matter of weeks, I went from just downloading and creating my account to over 300,000 followers on TikTok with numerous viral videos. I basically couldn't post a video without getting at least 100,000 views. This was really the golden age of TikTok, when everyone who posted a video was going viral and having wild success. This is because this was in the early days when there was a really low amount of competition, a really low supply, if you will. But the demand was constantly increasing. There was more people signing, signing up every day, but not necessarily more people creating content every single day. So for those of us like myself who were creating content, it was relatively easy, especially compared to nowadays, to go viral and to grow your following. Also, because it was the early days, not many people followed anyone yet. There weren't very many popular content creators or TikTokers yet. And so if you came across someone's video who you liked, you were a lot more willing to press follow back then than nowadays. But how does this relate to nowadays? And why did I decide to start over? Well, like I described, the majority of my videos were dancing and a lot of them were with my teammates or wearing my football pads or I was in my football uniform. And so because of that, my followers only wanted that content. They only wanted funny skits, dancing and football related content. But I shouldn't even say football related content because they didn't want like football highlights, they wanted dancing in football pads. So then fast forward a few years later and I'm out of college, I've graduated, I no longer have my football pads because that would be weird. And I'm a business owner, I'm an entrepreneur, I'm the co host of this podcast. I teach other business owners how to grow and monetize their social media. So I start posting about that on TikTok to my 300,000 followers. And I was struggling to get a thousand views, I was struggling to get any engagement, I was struggling to reach the people who followed me. And I was definitely struggling to grow. In fact, month after month, my following was going down, I was losing followers and people were leaving my profile. Why did this take place? This happened because I changed my niche. Because my original niche was dancing and funny skit related content wearing my football pads. And now my niche was something totally different. I was appealing to business owners and content creators like yourself who want to grow and monetize on the platform. And so step number one to growing on TikTok in 2025 is actually the same step one from 2019. It is to your niche. Now if you're just getting started and you don't know what your niche is, you don't know what you want to talk about yet, you don't know what your posts and your content to revolve around. It's okay to experiment and in fact I think it's actually beneficial to experiment. It's beneficial to spend a few weeks or maybe even a few months trying out different kinds of content, creating different styles of videos and posting about a wide variety of things to figure out what truly is your calling or what truly is your niche. The thing that you are super excited about and that you're going to talk about every single day. But once you do find that thing, stick to it and make sure that you're sure of it. You don't need to be sure of it for the rest of your life, but at least for the next few years, make sure that you are sticking to that one topic. And if you are going to change that topic, make sure it's to an adjacent category. Like maybe from dancing in football pads to dancing non football pads, make sure it's not dancing in football pads to helping entrepreneurs and creators grow a business on social media. And if you want a definition for niche, there's a million different definitions online. What I like to go with is that a niche is two ingredients. There's two parts to your niche. One part of your niche is the who. Who are you going to be posting for? What are the demographics that you are trying to attract? Back when I first started I didn't really think about it and so I was mainly attracting fellow college students or even high schoolers who just wanted like a funny little dancing video on TikTok. But now my who is business owners and content creators. So while there are definitely some business owners and content creators who are in the early stages of college or in high school, the majority of them are a little bit older. So it's a different age demographic, it's a different kind of person that I'm trying to attract now. And then the second Part second ingredient of niche is of course, what are you going to be talking to them about? What are the topics you're going to cover? What are the problems that you're going to solve? What is the general umbrella industry that you are a part of? Are you helping people learn to become better bakers? Are you sharing political news and opinions? Are you getting tips to become a better rock climber? Are you a parrot parent? And you're giving tips for caring for your bird? So again, step number one for growing on TikTok is picking out your niche. The worst thing that could happen is that you don't pick a niche and you start posting about all these different topics. One of them goes viral, one of your videos does well, and all of a sudden you have a bunch of followers in this one category who, who ultimately don't want to follow you, who ultimately have no interest in the other things that you're posting. I'll give you another example besides just my dancing and football pads example. One of my good friends posted a video on TikTok about like a green beans and paper bag thing that she ate and it went viral. And so she got a bunch of followers who followed her expecting recipe content and food related content. But that's not the kind of content creator she is, that's not who she's trying to attract. That's not the topic that she can realistically regularly talk about on a daily basis. So all of a sudden she had a big influx of followers, which seems really good on paper, but unfortunately those followers were not ideal. And if she were to ever monetize or try to create a business, a service, something that she wanted to sell, maybe a product or a digital product on her TikTok, those people wouldn't be interested unless it was like a recipe or food related topic. So again, step number one is to pick your niche. Picking your niche also helps because it helps train the algorithm. When you consistently post about one topic day after day, the algorithm learns what that topic is and it helps show your content to the people who would be interested. If I post about sandwiches every single day, then the algorithm is going to learn that and it's going to also learn what kinds of people are interested in sandwich making content. And it's going to push out my content to the people who would be interested. Step number two is probably the simplest of all the steps and it's just to set up your profile and make sure that it's set up correctly. Make sure that if this is a personal brand that your username has your personal name in it. If this is a business brand that it has your business name or your company name in the username. And make sure that your profile picture is a close up, well lit selfie. If this is a personal brand AKA you are going to be in every video. You want your face in the profile picture and you probably want it really close up with a solid color background so that it pops off the page. If this is for your brand or your business then I would recommend having a logo as your profile picture. But make sure that it is a logo that was designed to be a profile picture, not just a random logo. For example, I wouldn't use the full Google logo as Google's profile picture. The G O O G L E with the rainbow colors. That would be a horrible profile picture because it would be too zoomed out and far too small to read or easily recognize. So instead what does a smart company like Google do? They use the G, the G icon with the kind of multicolor it still represents Google but it is clearly a logo that was designed to be as an icon or as a profile picture. So that can be much smaller but still make sense and grab attention. Also your actual bio on TikTok I will say it matters far less on TikTok than it does on Instagram. Over on Instagram your bio is essential. It's searchable, it's a big component as to how people decide to follow you or not. They're going to read through your bio and make that determination on TikTok. Not so much on TikTok. Really your content does the talking, but it is helpful in your bio to either add some credibility, give us a little bit of background as to why you're talking about the topic or why this niche is your niche, or just tell us a little bit more about the kinds of content that you're going to be posting on TikTok. But again, the TikTok bio is not super important and the number of characters that you can use is far fewer on TikTok than on Instagram. So really just a sentence that's briefly describing who you are, what you do and what your credibility is should be fine for your TikTok bio. Next up, step three for growing on TikTok before we even start posting is we're going to curate a feed of ideas. Now maybe, maybe you've already been using TikTok for a while and so your for you page is all the things you're interested in. I know that when I open TikTok, my for you Page has Pokemon content and snowboarding content, the things I'm interested in, but the things that don't necessarily relate to what I post about or what I create content about. So when I created my new TikTok account, when I started over at the beginning of 2024, what I did was intentionally curate my for you page so that everything that I was being shown and recommended was essentially a post idea. This is going to be such a useful hack for you moving forward so that when you are struggling for content ideas, when you do need some inspiration rather than having to go looking for it, it's basically going to be served to you on a silver platter. That is your for you page. How do you do that? Step one is I would recommend following at least 10 accounts that already post about what you want to post about, or if there's no one in the world who posts about what you want to post about, at least people who post similar content, people who post content that's adjacent to what you're going to be posting, or at least they're in the same industry. Follow a bunch of them and start engaging with their posts. Then as you're scrolling through your for you page, intentionally engage with accounts that you're getting ideas from. If a video pops up and you're like, oh, this is a great idea, I could totally recreate my own version of this, follow that account, like the video, maybe even save the video. If you then scroll down and the next video is like a train and you're like, I don't care about trains. I'm not going to create train related content. I'm creating sushi related content. Well then skip the train video or tap the share button in the bottom right hand corner and then tap the broken heart that says not interested. And that will tell the algorithm directly, do not show me any more train related content. That way, you are essentially training, pun intended, the algorithm to not show you that content, instead show you the kind of content that you're going to get ideas and inspiration from in the future. This has been super helpful for me, not just as a creator, but also as a consumer, because sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and you want to stop working and stop creating content. So when I want to do that, I log into my old TikTok account and I still have my good old for you page, which I've been training for the last five years to show me the kinds of content that I want to see. And when I'm ready to create content, when I'm ready To flip that switch and become a business owner and a content creator. I can switch to my new TikTok account and I can see a for you page that is just filled with ideas and inspiration. So those were the first three steps to growing on TikTok in 2025. The rest of these steps are going to be strategic recommendations that come from a recent study that was published by metricool, which is a major scheduling tool. It's the scheduling tool that I use. And they put out a study that analyzed over 1 million TikTok posts and over 80,000 TikTok accounts to figure out things like how much should you post? What's the best time of day to post? How do you reach more people? What should you do about hashtags and SEO? So I'm going to share all of that with you because this is what has informed my strategy and this is literally the data driven best practices moving forward. Now, I do want to say these are best practices and general recommendations. Nothing is one size fits all. Ultimately, there are going to be different strokes for different folks. Some things are going to work for one person that might not work for someone else. And so what I'm about to share with you are averages are what works for most people. But you might not be most people. You might be an outlier or an exception. The only way to tell is ultimately to put this into practice. Not to get on my soapbox and get too preachy at you, but I do want to pause myself for a second and say, no matter what I say so far, or for the rest of this podcast, ultimately it's up to you to take action. It's up to you to create content. It's up to you to stay consistent. It's up to you to implement what I am teaching. So once you finish listening to this podcast, I want you to do your homework and actually go out there into the world, create your account and start creating content and follow through on the tips and strategies that I'm about to share. And ultimately, if you find after a few months that these things aren't working, you can adjust your strategy. But at least you know that that isn't going to work. At least you know what wasn't working for you. And you can adjust, but you'll never know what's not working until you give it a try. So with all that being said, how much should you post on TikTok? The TikTok algorithm is fundamentally different than any other social media. It's part of what makes TikTok so addictive. It's part of what makes TikTok so successful, but it's also what makes us post as much or as little as we should on TikTok. Basically, the high level view of it is that the TikTok algorithm is content driven, while most other algorithms, specifically the Instagram algorithm, is social driven. So on Instagram, they're looking at what friends do you have, what followers do you follow, what do your followers engage with? If you're always engaging with this kind of content, and other people are always engaging with this kind of content, then we should show you posts that they're into. The Instagram algorithm really cares about the social circle, and that's because of its roots going all the way back to the Facebook algorithm 20 years ago. The TikTok algorithm, however, it doesn't really care who you follow, and it definitely doesn't care about who you follow, who they follow. The TikTok algorithm just says, if you like this kind of content, we're going to show you more of this kind of content. So that's really great news for those of us who are starting over on TikTok. That is why it is so much easier to go viral and reach more people on TikTok than it is on any other platform. Because on TikTok, more than anywhere else, they don't care about how many followers you have. They don't care if someone decided to follow you or someone else. They just care about are you making the content that people want to see. Again, that goes back to point number one about niche. If you're consistently making content about one niche or one topic, then the algorithm is able to learn what that is and show it to people who are interested. So all this to say, how much should you post on TikTok? The more the better I'm going to recommend, because I know you want a number at least two posts per day on TikTok. Now, according to that study by Metricool, the more times you post in a day, the more followers you have. So there's a direct correlation between posting frequency and total number of followers. So if you want to post 3, 4, 5, 6, even 7 times a day, go for it. My bigger, broader recommendation would be to focus on what you can sustain, rather than getting all fired up when this podcast episode ends and posting seven times today and six times tomorrow and seven times the next day and then burning out, running out of ideas, feeling overwhelmed and stressed out, and giving up. Instead of doing that, figure out a number that you can realistically sustain. For me, over the course of 2024, TikTok hasn't been my main focus. I've been focused on other areas of my business and even other areas of social media. And so while I've been taking TikTok more seriously in 2024 than in years past, it hasn't been my main social media. And so because of that, I have figured out that I can realistically sustain about two posts per day on TikTok in 2024. But admittedly, a lot of those posts have been reposts from Instagram or even reposts from previous TikToks. We'll get to that later. But again, what I have found that I can ustain is about one to two TikToks per day. So I want you to figure out realistically, based off the season of life you're in, based off your business goals, based off your capacity and availability, how much can you realistically Sustain posting on TikTok? And then once you find that number, number one, stick to it, and number two, challenge yourself to do a little bit more. So if you can realistically sustain one a day, some days try to post a second time. If you can realistically sustain just three a week, then challenge yourself to post four a week sometimes. Because it is through challenging yourself to push a little bit outside of your comfort zone that the growth will take place not just on TikTok but also in life. So again, minimum two posts per day would be my general recommendation. And for those two posts I'm going to suggest that one of them be a trend. So something that already exists on TikTok. This doesn't necessarily have to be a trending audio, but it can also just be a trending content style. I'm sure that you could think of a hundreds examples right now where not everyone is using the exact same background music, but everyone is basically creating a variety of the same kind of video. And then your second post is going to be a talking head style video, just like I'm making right now. Talking directly into the camera. It can be storytelling, it can be giving a tutorial, it can be giving a quick tip, it can be explaining something, it can be giving a list of ideas, something like that, where you are using your own voice and talking directly to the camera. That is going to be your second video. For both of these videos I would recommend a duration of 10 to 60 seconds. According to the Metricool study, the overall ideal length for your TikTok videos is actually between two and five minutes, which is mind blowing because there used to be a thought that the best way to grow on TikTok was with 7 or less second videos and that used to be true, but now TikTok is really preferring long form content. So overall the data suggests that a two to five minute video is going to do the best. However, according to this metrical study, accounts that are newer or smaller accounts with less than a thousand followers perform best when their videos are between 10 and 60 seconds long. So aim for that 10 to 60 second mark whether you're doing a trend or an original talking head audio and that should perform best. What time should you post those two posts? Well, according to the metrical study, the best times to post are in the early mornings between 2 and 3am for most professional profiles. It was really interesting to note in the metrical study that there was quite a difference in performance and best performing times between professional and non professional accounts. I'm going to recommend that you switch to a professional account so that you can get the advanced analytics, that you can get access to the TikTok creator front so that you can integrate with third party tools. I just definitely think it's in your best interest to switch to a professional account rather than just a generic personal account. But it is interesting to note that there were slightly different numbers and slightly different best practices for each. But again, if you have a professional profile, according to Metricool, the general best time to post is between 2 and 3am in your local time zone. Now I understand that might not be realistic for you. I understand that you can't manually post at that hour because you're asleep most days. So I would recommend either using a third party scheduler like Metricool for example, or just hosting your content at a different time. It's not like it's going to tank and do horrible if it was posted at 7:00am when you wake up and it would have gone viral if you had just posted it two hours earlier. It might perform a little bit better if you post it at 2 or 3 in the morning. But generally speaking on TikTok, as with most social medias, there is no universal best time to post. There's only the best time for you and your account. So figure out what works best for you and go from there. All right, tip number six to grow on TikTok in 2025 is to improve your SEO. SEO stands for search Engine Optimization. And there was some pretty exciting news that came out in 2024. A study that basically showed that people under the age of 35 are using TikTok and Instagram to search for things more than they're using Google if you add YouTube into the equation. So YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, every generation is now using those three to search for things more than they are using Google. Which is mind blowing because when you think of searching it, you think of Googling it. But now most people are turning to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to search for things more than even Google. So where does SEO fit into this and how do you actually improve your SEO with your posts on TikTok? There are three main areas that I would recommend focusing on. Those three main areas are, number one, the video itself. A lot of people either fail to remember or don't know that the text on screen is 100% analyzed by the algorithm. The algorithm can scan your video, and it is scanning your video at all times to read the text on screen, the titles that you put, the captions, the closed captions that is on the video, and any sort of text that you add to the screen that is visible. And that aids in your SEO. According to the study by Metricool, they found that when adding a cover or text to the screen on the actual video on TikTok, it significantly increased their chances of showing up in search results. Results that tells us, plain and simple, that one of the best ways to improve Your SEO on TikTok is by including closed captions, text on screen, or text on the COVID that relates to the video itself. The second area that can improve your SEO is the caption, the actual text that you're putting below the video. Usually the best practice on TikTok is to keep your captions relatively short. Unlike Instagram, where people oftentimes like to write really long captions because people like to read really long captions. On TikTok, it's a general best practice to just have one to two sentences in your caption. In your caption on TikTok is also where you're going to put the third ingredient for improving your SEO, and that is your hashtags. Now, back in the early days of TikTok, people didn't really know what to do with their hashtags, so they would put hashtag FYP to try to get on the for you page. That's not what I would recommend. Instead, what I would recommend is to use three to five hashtags that are specific to the content itself, not specific to your account, but specific to this exact post. So for example, if you were giving beginner rock climber tips for men in their 30s, then you wouldn't do beginnerrockclimbertips in every post. Instead, you would use hashtags that are specific to the post itself. So if one post is a gear guide for the best recommendations for rock climbing gear, then you would use a hashtag like beginner rock climbing gear or hashtag rock climbing gear for beginners. Hashtags that are very specific and that basically describe the video so that if someone, and this is a great thing to imagine, imagine someone couldn't see your video, but you had to describe what it was to them in just three to five words. That's what I would recommend for your hashtags. And again, three to five hashtags is best. Rather than trying to add a bunch of hashtags which can confuse the algorithm and overload the searching capabilities, basically trying to put your post in too many different areas, stick to three to five hashtags that relate to and describe your content. And this is important because according to that study from metricool, the vast majority of views on TikTok come from the for you page. They don't come from the following page, they don't necessarily come from the search page, they come directly from the for you page. So when you are using these SEO tools, not only does it aid in your searchability, it helps the algorithm more easily figure out what your content is about, like beginner rock climbing gear. So then it can show your content to people who would be interested in that sort of content. That pretty much wraps up our best practices in terms of what you should post, when you should post, and how you should post. Now, there are a few other key ingredients to make sure that you are having success and that you're growing and getting the views that you deserve on TikTok. So tip number seven for growing on TikTok in 2025 is to respond to every comment. There's kind of this stigma or this common practice on TikTok where a lot of creators do not respond to their comments. I don't know why this is. I don't know if it's people being too cool for school, but it has been shown that when you consistently respond to people, answer questions and react and respond to comments, your page does better, you grow more, there's a stronger sense of community, and people keep coming back. I heard this great analogy the other day from my friend Lo who works for the Stan team, and she said if you were to go into a coffee shop and let's say, compliment the barista on their jacket, and the barista didn't respond, you would probably not only never speak to that barista again but you might not ever even shop at that coffee shop again. And the same is true on social media. If people are taking the time to comment on your page, even if it's just something like a laughing emoji, take the time to reciprocate, take the time to respond. At the end of the day it is social media, so make sure that you are interacting, responding. And a best practice on TikTok is don't just respond, but respond with a follow up question. And whenever possible, use the reply with a video tool to create an additional video. It kind of creates like a little chain or a playlist if you will, where people can go from one video, they can see the comments where someone asked a question and they can go right to your next video where you are answering said question. So tip number seven is to react, respond and just be social. Tip number eight of eight and I will actually throw in a bonus tip for tip number nine. But tip number eight, because I promised you eight. Tips to grow on TikTok in 2025 is to repost your best content every 90 days. This is something that I am a huge proponent of on Instagram. If you've watched any of my Instagram trainings, you know what I'm about to say. But it goes for TikTok as well. Once three months have passed, even if the trend is no longer trending, post that popular video again. If you ever have a video that goes viral, or even if it just does better than the rest, like your average videos, get like a thousand views and you suddenly have a video that gets 5,000, once two to three months have passed, post it again. If it did well the first time, it will likely do well the second time. Just make sure that there isn't any sort of TikTok watermark or logo on the video and you're good to go. You can use the same hashtags, the same caption, the same audio, the same video, everything, post it again. You do not need to delete the original, you do not need to announce that the second one is a repost. By simply posting it again, you really significantly increase your chances of that video doing well and of course in turn your account growing. And then last but not least, I will give you one more bonus tip that we have seen to be effective. It's not necessary, but it has been very helpful for many accounts growing on TikTok and that is to use TikTok Live. There seems to be a strong correlation between people who go live more frequently and people who grow on TikTok there also seems to be a correlation that when you post a video and then go live, the video you posted right before going live oftentimes will reach a wider or a larger audience. So if you have the capacity to go live on TikTok, knock your socks off and go for it. Those were my eight plus one tips for growing on TikTok in 2020. If you want more content like this, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Thank you so much for being here today and as always, happy networking.
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