The influencer’s guide to cracking TikTok

TikTok is one of the hottest social media platforms right now, and is particularly popular with gen Z. One of its biggest draws is the ability to go from a virtual unknown to a viral sensation overnight.

One of social media influencer Josh Richards​​’ first TikTok videos garnered 40.7 million views. Josh now has 25.6 million followers on the short-form video platform.

But how, in the space of a few years, did the influencer – and founder and CEO of CrossCheck Studios – go from a virtual unknown to 2022’s fourth highest-earning TikTok personality on Forbes?

“I made a lot of fuck ups before that first video really blew up,” said Josh. “It was a year and a half of posting five videos a day on Musical.ly [the app that pre-dated TikTok]. It was just continuously trying to find out a way to post and to get it to go trending.”

Beta testing for influencers

In what the creator describes as ‘beta testing for influencers’, Josh would post several different styles of video to see what got swept up in the platform’s algorithm and what sank to the bottom.

The tutorial style video was what “really blew up”, Josh said, adding that “people really resonated with it because they wanted to save that video, put it in their favourites, go back and learn that trick later”.

Josh said TikTok success was about hitting on a format that drove engagement – not just in terms of views, but in terms of comments and of requests for follow-up videos that could be put out on a regular basis.

TikTok hits the right notes for gen Z

When asked what makes TikTok so attractive to gen Z, Josh said: “I think the ability to be a star overnight. It’s this platform that anyone can go viral on.”

“You don’t need the best phone that’s out right now. You don’t need the highest camera quality. You can be in your mom’s basement filming a video – that’s what I was doing – and be able to blow up,” explained Josh.

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Main image: Lukas Schulze/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)