Embracing TikTok as an Indie Hacker

If you’re trying to reach people under 25, TikTok is where you go. It absolutely dwarfs the competition in terms of reach and ease of market entry. However, it can be pretty tricky to understand, so after 2+ years of posting on there, I thought I’d share some lessons learned after lots of a/b testing.

Account strategy

You need to create a personal account, and then subsequently create accounts for your projects that you want to promote. Do you standard “build in public” content on your personal, with some details about your projects, and then deeper project content on the project account. You can then repost project posts on your main account. This allows you to leverage a large existing audience across all your projects, rather than having to start from scratch. Also, it’s great for your personal brand to have a following on your personal account.

It’s all in the hook

There is almost no friction when it comes to moving onto the next piece of content on TikTok - all it takes is a single swipe. This is both a blessing and a curse. As such, the first 3 seconds is make or break - if the user doesn’t care, they’ll swipe away. Make them care with a quick, engaging hook.

To meme or not to meme?

Or to dance…

TikTok started life as a lip syncing/dancing app, and whilst it’s expanded a lot, there’s still a lot of content around this, and meme templates. Trends come and go rapidly, and you can get BIG numbers if you time it right. The problem is, it doesn’t translate to followers/consistent viewers. If you look at people who make viral memes, their next videos may only get 1% of the attention. Likes are a bit of a vanity metric on TikTok - consistency is where it’s at, especially within a niche. TikTok decides niches the viewer is interested in very quickly - for me when I downloaded it, within 24 hours I basically exclusively had rugby highlights, cat videos, coding and business content - pretty much all my interests. If you can get consistently in a niche, you’ll do well.

Retention

A key component of the TikTok algorithm is viewer retention - i.e. how much of the video does the viewer watch. If it dips below a certain threshold, TikTok deems it poor quality and takes it off the “For You” page. Keep the video length as short as possible whilst retaining quality (no long intros!), make interesting cuts, and add captions! CapCut is great for captions.

AI Generated Content

Honestly don’t bother with this, any reasonably smart viewer can spot it a mile off. Maybe it’ll get better in a couple of years, but right now it’s not doing particularly well, certainly not in our niche

SEO

TikTok is an underrated search engine - some reports have said that gen-z use it more than google. You can optimise your content for search by using the description and hashtags, but also adding text on screen within the in-app editor. If TikTok has successfully “tagged” your video and it’s performing in search, you will be able to see a keyword above it. Usually on my personal account, it’s something about coding, and on my brand account (job board for graduates), it’s something to do with job interviews or careers.

Paid Promo

I personally try and avoid this as

1. it costs money and has a confusing payment structure

2. TikTok has an “anti ad” culture, similar to reddit.

If you do want to give your content a boost, do not make specific adverts - boost one of your successful existing videos, and optimise it to get more followers (this is an option in the ad setup).

Going Live

Once you hit 1000 followers, it’s possible to “go live”, where people can chat with you and ask questions. I find this a really useful way of getting loyal followers and community members. The downside is, you’ll almost certainly get some trolls - don’t engage. Block and move on.

Dealing with feedback/comments

If someone comments on your TikTok, you can create a video response, which can often do really well - some of my best videos have been these. They’re particularly useful if one of your videos has done big numbers, as you can “piggyback” off the success. Generally speaking, use this to respond to questions or polite criticism/objections

You will get negative comments if a video hits a certain threshold of views. I delete the comment if it’s some kind of personal insult, otherwise I usually just leave it. You may want to turn comments off (you can do this at any time)

My Setup:

• iPhone 13 using cinematic camera setting
• Basic phone stand
• I shoot videos with light facing me. Usually in front of the largest window in my apartment.
• Shure MV7 mic (I already had this for podcasting, you can use a decent lapel mic instead which will be much cheaper)
• VEED premium - amazing functionality and just works for editing. You can add captions, cut out silence, and resize/repurpose content
• Capcut - free app from Bytedance, creators of TikTok. Great for captions and quick edits, and seems to artificially boost you in the FYP algorithm.