The TikTok algorithm is mysterious, powerful, and frustrating. This was just for illustration.). Anyone can record a video, upload it into TikTok and start getting views based on this algorithm. You’ve seen them in schools, doctors’ offices, bedroom walls. However, we knew that Kapwing is a perfect product for medium-tier TikTok creators. As for poor user response – well, you do the math.

This is especially important for Android users.

The app is taking the digital world by storm, and marketers are taking note. In essence, the algorithm is triggered by the velocity of the engagement it receives. It's easy for them to identify businesses and teams – if you have multiple accounts on a device, are logged in on multiple devices, or have analytics on, those are dead giveaways.

Some of my favorites are @zachking, @qpark, and @logicalfinance.

I Voted 26 Times This Week. But your content needs to stand out from the millions of others being made. I’m not sure exactly how TikTok’s algorithm matches people and videos: The company’s “Transparency Center” hasn’t responded to my request to examine the source code. The takeaway: The machine-vision theory seems overblown.
Sure, people with high follower counts get more video views and engagement due to their large followings, but this doesn’t mean new accounts don’t stand a chance. My new best friend is a little different but cool once you get to know him. These encourage viewers to leave comments on your content – another “engagement” ranking factor to play along with.

We made our first viral video in November and then posted almost daily through December without success. Question-based captions help as well. Most of them are verified and some of them run ads. Imagine this... You've had some success on the app and are posting regularly.

There’s some speculation, but everyone seems to agree with @kingkhieu on metrics: So naturally, about half of the videos you’ll see on “For You” use some trick to get that rewatch.

To contact the author of this story:Cathy O'Neil at coneil19@bloomberg.net, To contact the editor responsible for this story:Mark Whitehouse at mwhitehouse1@bloomberg.net, Cathy O’Neil is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. In short, even if TikTok is transparent about how its algorithm works, and even if it has been acting benignly so far, I wouldn’t assume that it can be trusted not to engage in damaging manipulation. TikTok philosophers have long tried to decode its brain and share “hacks” to guarantee views, making it seem like everyone has a different theory about how the algorithm chooses who to make famous. No amount of tricks will help if your videos don’t resonate with people.

Get expert social media advice delivered straight to your inbox. Turns out TikTok, Snapchat, and other apps don’t optimize their in-app camera for every Android device (the main reason why people think Android cameras are so bad).

Content for a diverse audience needs to be instantly riveting and easily understood. The takeaway: As a new creator, you might be able to suddenly stop posting after your first big video to help it get more views, but it’s not a sustainable growth strategy. We generally repost if a video has at least 10% likes and there’s an obvious way to make it better; otherwise, just leave it or delete permanently.

There’s probably also some editing to ensure people don’t keep seeing the same (or too similar) videos. Maybe. Unnecessarily long intros are a buzzkill. For a while, I used my Samsung to record and edit in TikTok, and the videos would come out super grainy. Is It Really Time to Start Up Buybacks Again?

When she's not writing, she usually has her head buried in a business book or fantasy novel. Storyboarding, getting the right take, enlisting good “actors”, tightening the edits: all of this would have made our creation process more efficient and the end product more real. Positive user response to a video tells the algorithm to show the video to more consumers, helping it get the exposure it deserves.

So, introduce a hook into your video within three seconds so viewers don’t yawn and scroll past it. Nothing crazy, but enough to say that first-round reach on each video seems to be more of a function of your follower count. As you get frustrated with videos not performing well, you start posting less frequently. Influencers and others who succeeded in getting their content onto the For You page offered some guesswork that gave a rough framework to follow. People enjoy consuming videos made for hashtag challenges, keeping an eye out for those who add a unique creative spin to the challenge.
 Such recommendation engines tend to store information about users and content as short arrays of numbers, typically around 20 digits in length. The only way to build an audience on TikTok is with legitimately funny, relatable, impressive, and/or informative content. As best I can tell, it’s like any other algorithm, which means it can be used for evil or for good. So a person would have an array describing her “tastes,” and a video would have one describing its “qualities.”. Like other social-media apps, TikTok makes money by keeping people watching, so it can serve them more ads. When something starts trending, more and more people flock toward it. There’s a science to this as well, summed up under the law of reciprocity, which states that when person A does something nice for person B (in this case, leaving comments), person B feels an urge to return the favor (i.e.

Either way, participating in a hashtag challenge is an excellent way to grow your video views and gain favor with the algorithm.

That’s Too Much. People have hypothesized that TikTok’s filter may do more than catch copyrighted content – it may determine which videos go viral. It’s not a coincidence that effective tips for “gaming the algorithm” generally just help you make better creative decisions.

TikTok philosophers have long tried to decode its brain and share “hacks” to guarantee views, making it seem like everyone has a different theory about how the algorithm chooses who to make famous.

Ultimately, there is no way to “hack” the TikTok algorithm. Leaving comments and engaging with others’ content encourages them to return your comments and shares. From our observations, automated vision doesn't play a huge role anymore (at least in the United States). It finds and promotes quality content with superhuman accuracy. But they’ve also objectively been among the best videos we’ve made. Fortunately, TikTok has recently lifted the veil, highlighting the major ranking factors that run the show. Check out Jason Derulo smartly using stickers in his video for some inspiration: While this is obvious for most social platforms, it’s particularly important for TikTok.

TikTok's For You page shows you an amazing breadth of curated content. What is TikTok in three words?

Well, our first videos weren't great, and we’ve moved up from ~300 to ~800 average first-round views – with our most popular videos being posted recently. TikTok has been exposed for asking its human moderators to discriminate in the past… could it have worked these preferences into machine vision?

We know that 20,000 people visited our profile in January, but we couldn’t tell how many of those people were actually interested in our product (instead of just browsing). The TikTok algorithm doesn’t explicitly give preference to follower count as a ranking signal. The pros: you can improve creatively on the video, and can try with a different batch of first reviewers. You probably find some of your favorite pictures, videos, and creators on Instagram, but it's also a great place to share videos to your friends & followers. We’ve all seen motivational posters – a grand, serene background with an inspirational quote overlaid.

Here's a full rundown of the many ways to post video content on Instagram, and the different types of videos you can post. But the question remains: how do new TikTok accounts go viral? Going to the ballot box is good practice for other kinds of political action. The answer isn’t as straightforward as finding trending hashtags. This theory, described well by user @jeanjacketsb, suggests that TikTok can use video views to keep casual creators excited and posting consistently. So, make the most of TikTok’s video editing features including available filters, stickers, effects, templates, and other editing options. Every account I’ve ended up following makes their own style of video.

You see, TikTok shows all videos, irrespective of who posts them, to its interested users. comment back and perhaps more). How Tik Tok Works.

Consider adding the #duetwithme hashtag to your caption.

Over at TikTok, hashtag challenges are all the rage. But the question is: how can you get your videos to catch your audience’s attention during that time? My For You page now shows me a diverse collection of creators in all sorts of places, which suggests that the filter is now probably more of a quality catch that boosts you to the ~600 view mark. Tik Tok brings the social media app experience to a new level. Collaborative Filtering. TikTok beats tweets to writing short captions. If there’s a specific account they interact with a lot, they’re more likely to see content from it. But successful TikTokers stick to one primary theme, format, or motif; they don’t publish lots of different types of content.

While there’s no magic recipe, coming to grips with the TikTok algorithm can help you work with it and improve your odds of success.