10 lessons learned from getting 1,000 followers on TikTok in a month

Hello all! I'm gonna keep this short because I drank too much wine, and all I wanna do is get in bed, read Way of Kings and sleep.

I love #buildinpublic, but I just couldn't bring myself to get into Twitter and start posting revenue numbers, so I decided to give TikTok a go.

I just crossed the 1,000 follower mark on TikTok, and I thought I'd share some things I've learned along the way.

I realise my 1,000 followers is a drop in the ocean, but I figured sharing some lessons learned could be helpful for fellow founders trying to build an audience.

You can see my account here: https://www.tiktok.com/@rocketming

1. Your TikTok follower count doesn't seem to matter in terms of how well your content performs. My co-founder Zenos (https://www.tiktok.com/@zenosjake) has 90K+ followers on TikTok, but if you compare our last five videos, mine have beaten his.

2. It's a crapshoot. Just when you think you're onto a scalable, repeatable content type, TikTok throws a curveball at you (i.e. you video does really badly), and you're back at square one.

3. That said, TikTok seems to like lists, especially ranked lists: basically, anything that's quick and easy to digest.

4. It's a lot more fun if you're actually interested in the content you're making. This may sound obvious, but there's a reason I'm not dancing on camera and instead making videos about entrepreneurs and their journeys and a bit of investing-related content!

5. "Show up every day...for two years" (heard in a podcast featuring Nathan Barry, founder of Convertkit). You really have to just keep at it. When one of your videos gets 75,000 views, and the following one gets 900 views, it's easy to want to give up. Making a video is hard work. However, if you just keep at it and iterate, you'll probably find that success is just around the corner.

6. TikTok can be a great audience for B2C — less so for B2B — which is why I'm trying to create content around entrepreneurship that's more mainstream in the hope that a subset of my audience comprises entrepreneurs who may be interest in my product.

7. Get a microphone.

8. Practice makes perfect. No one cares if your video bombs. Just get started today.

9. Don't let quick success get to your head. At the same time, don't let a failed video derail your journey. Just keep at it. This is kind of a reiteration of point 5.

10. Finally, I'm seeing a lot of similarities between making TikTok videos and starting a startup (idea → launch → iterate). Similarly, you come up with a video idea, post it, measure engagement and try to make your next one better.

O.K. that's it for now. I'm gonna keep going at this TikTok thing, and I hope I'll be able to share more learnings with you as I continue this journey.

Thanks for reading and good night!

P.S. Oh yes — if you have any questions at all, please feel free to ask me. And I'm working on an email/SMS automation app called Sendif (Send + If) for Shopify stores, which I plan to use TikTok to promote when the app is ready.