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TikTok took everyone by storm, and there was hardly anyone who could have predicted its meteoric rise in such a short timespan. While companies neglected it at first, the past couple of years showed more and more businesses joining TikTok, finding it a new venue to grow and attract customers.
When you join the platform to make your brand famous on TikTok, you’ll notice that you need to have a unique approach and that TikTok marketing has to be significantly different from your efforts on other social media. This refers to almost every aspect of it—from the type of content you make to the way the algorithm works.
Many creators and businesses on the platform have faced the dreaded issue of receiving no views on their videos. If you’re wondering “why my TikTok videos are not getting any views,” we’ll explain what causes 0 views on TikTok and how to get your audience to start watching.
Before you start panicking, you should know that there’s a waiting period for TikTok to display your video to other users. Whenever someone uploads a video, TikTok will display it on the For You page to a limited number of people to see whether they engage with the video or not. If you start getting likes and comments, TikTok will keep recommending it.
The platform shows the video to other users typically within a day, but many users had their view count stuck at 0 for days and weeks before it started going up.If your video still has 0 views after a while, then it’s time to look at what you might be doing wrong. Some of the most common reasons behind the issue include:
A while ago, TikTok used to promote new users’ initial videos to let people know about the new creator on the block. This is no longer the case.If you’re a new face on TikTok, you shouldn’t immediately upload a video. This is because TikTok is working on determining whether you’re a genuine user or a fake one. Before you upload a video, make sure to interact with other users. Spend some time on the For You page watching other videos and interacting with them (i.e., leaving likes or comments). Make sure you also fill out your bio and upload a profile picture.
You should focus on making your first few videos high-quality and in line with what TikTok users want to see. If your initial videos can’t generate enough engagement, this will affect your future content as well.
You can’t go viral on TikTok if there’s nobody around to watch your videos. One of the major mistakes new business accounts make is not factoring in the number of people active at the moment of posting a video.
If you want your video to get views, you should do it at specific hours, which vary from day to day. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, these are the best times to post on TikTok for Eastern Standard Time:
Day Time of Day (EST)
Monday 6:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. 10:00 p.m.
Tuesday 2:00 a.m. 4:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m.
Wednesday 7:00 a.m. 8:00 a.m. 11:00 p.m.
Thursday 9:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. 7:00 p.m.
Friday 5:00 a.m. 1:00 p.m. 3:00 p.m.
Saturday 11:00 a.m. 7:00 p.m. 8:00 p.m.
Sunday 7:00 a.m. 8:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m.
Before you upload any video, make sure it doesn’t violate any of TikTok’s community guidelines. They will block your content from getting views if the video you post:
Your video will be on hold until TikTok reviews its content to see if you violated the guidelines in any way.
The biggest problem with these violations is the so-called shadowbanning. This happens especially if you have an already established account with lots of views and you suddenly post a problematic video. Shadowbanning means that the platform doesn’t ban you outright (your older videos are still watchable), but it does stop your new videos from reaching other users.
When you’re shadowbanned, you receive no notification and have to figure out the steps toward getting unbanned on your own.
Apart from issues with guidelines, you can experience problems with your previous content not being good enough. The algorithm takes into account engagement data on your previous videos, including:
If your content doesn’t generate enough traction, TikTok will find you to be a poor content creator and won’t recommend your videos to its users. That’s why you need to strive to make all your videos high-quality, with an original approach and clear value.
Irrelevant content can refer to two types of mistakes:
TikTok trends are extremely important to all accounts on the platform, not just businesses. You should always try to find ideas on the Discover page and learn what type of content is trending at the moment.
This will allow you to jump in on something current and increase your chances of showing up on more people's For You feed. Additionally, nobody wants to see a brand posting a dance challenge that was popular two years ago, and TikTok’s algorithm will not give you any love for it.
Another way of posting irrelevant content relates to changing the niche all of a sudden. For instance, if you’re an electronics store that posts tech tips and promotes its products, you may gain a following among people interested in those topics. If you suddenly post a makeup tutorial or your workout routine, TikTok won’t recommend that to the people you usually reach. While the first video might get some initial boost, if you continue making videos irrelevant to your niche, your views won’t get far from zero.
Unless your video is under review or your account is in bad standing, all of your videos should gain at least a few views since the algorithm automatically suggests any new content to the users.
If your video shows up on someone’s For You page, and they watch it for a second, that will count as a view. Still, short watch times will have a detrimental effect on TikTok’s willingness to recommend your content in the future.
This means that you shouldn’t really be worried about the view itself but the quality of the view. Once your video gains some views, go through TikTok analytics and see how people respond to your content.
You should focus on:
Try to make your video as interactive as possible. Entice your viewers to leave a comment by asking them a question in the video or starting a giveaway competition they can enter by leaving a comment or sharing your video.Another stipulation for a giveaway can be getting the viewers to follow your account, as more followers will bring more views to your videos organically.
A riskier way of getting people to comment on your videos is to purposefully be a bit controversial or tongue in cheek. Chipotle hit a home run with their “Boomers pronouncing Chipotle” TikToks, but this can be a slippery slope. Make sure your efforts don’t come off as offensive, in bad taste, or cringey.
This is a crucial aspect of the success of your video. The completion rate represents how much of the video a user sees, i.e., how long they stick around. For instance, if your video lasts ten seconds and a user scrolls down after six seconds, your completion rate will be 60%.If you want to increase your completion rate, you should first consider the duration of the video. The longer your videos are, the lower the completion is in general. According to InVideo, average watch times are as follows:
Video DurationAverage Watch Time
15 seconds or less 90% completion or more
15–29 seconds 60%–70% completion
30 seconds and more 50%–60% completion
The duration of the video shouldn’t impede the quality—if you have a brilliant idea for a 3-minute video, go for it. Still, strive to keep your videos around the 15-second mark, especially if your account is new.
Another way to keep people interested and watching to the end is to tease an important event at the end of a video, such as some type of reveal. That is why transition videos are popular on TikTok.
For instance, there are hundreds of trends that revolve around the creator standing behind a blanket or listening to a song waiting for the beat to drop. Users stick around to see what will happen when the important moment in the song triggers the event—it can be an outfit change, a special dance, or something else.
Re-watches are a powerful tool because they suggest to TikTok that your videos are good enough for people to watch them more than once. This happens when your completion rate goes over 100%. It’s a powerful tool because:
The best way to achieve re-watches is to edit your video as a perfect loop. This means matching the beginning and the ending of the video perfectly so that it feels like the video never ends.
If you’re struggling to stay on the For You page consistently, you can improve your efforts and grow your business on TikTok with a financial boost. When your organic view count is low, you can increase it through:
You can use paid ads to reach out to a new audience and let them know about your company or products. The ads serve to either increase your brand awareness or to get the viewers to do a certain action, such as follow your account, visit your website, or buy a product.
On TikTok, you can create video ads that show up on the For You page either as the first video on the feed or in between two other recommended videos. You can also use a brand takeover ad, which shows up on the screen when a user starts the app.
Two other types of ads are related to user-generated content, and many brands use it because it allows them to grow their company capitalizing on the creativity of others. You can promote your hashtag on the Discover page and start a hashtag challenge as Chipotle did with #GuacDance.
The other way to promote your company through other people’s content is by using branded effects, such as stickers and 2D, 3D, or AR effects that show up as recommended when someone is creating a video within the app.
TikTok rewards the best content creators because they’re the ones that generate the most traffic on their app. Through their Creator Fund program and influencer marketing, they allow influencers to make money on TikTok and devote more time to creating videos.
As a business, you can use a creator’s following to reach a huge audience that wouldn’t know about you otherwise. You can pay influencers to create a sponsored post that promotes your brand or products.When choosing the creator you want to work with, you can go for the ones with the biggest following, but their posts cost more, and your target audience may not be following them.
Try the Creator Marketplace to find someone who is popular in your niche, and you’ll get better results than paying top dollar to someone like Charli D’Amelio or Addison Rae Easterling.
TikTok is the highest-growing social media platform, and as a business, it would be ludicrous to ignore it because it opens the door to a new, young audience. Still, building a solid presence on TikTok as a business requires immense patience, effort, and innovation.
TikTok’s strongest suit poses the biggest problem for most companies—any marketing strategies that work on Instagram and Twitter go straight out the window.
You need to create a completely different approach to every aspect of your TikTok marketing strategy—from the type of content you create to the way you interact with your followers.If you want to have a successful TikTok account that generates a lot of views, you need to have a clear content strategy and be consistent in your uploading. Your social media managers need to work tirelessly to make sure the content you upload is:
While running an ad campaign, your social team also needs to create videos, communicate with followers, and follow trends to make sure they don’t miss out on any opportunities. It’s a lot of work for a small in-house team, especially when you consider that TikTok is not the only platform they have to deal with.
Kubbco is a TikTok-partnered social media agency that has the know-how and the experience of going viral on TikTok and building successful accounts from the ground up.Our team consists of content writers, video producers, graphic designers, social media strategists, and data analysts, to name a few. All of them will work together to achieve your goals on TikTok and make your marketing efforts successful.When you reach out and tell us your objective, we’ll:
When you reach out to Kubbco and tell us what you want to achieve on TikTok, you can sit back and let us do what we do best—create engaging content and increase your following. The next viral video in your niche could be yours. We’ve done it several times already for brands like OLAPLEX, Matas, and NATURLI’ Foods.This is what we did for them:
Contact us if you want to increase the number of zeros in your view count on TikTok and gain new followers quickly!
I create viral TikToks for brands.
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