5,000 TikTok Followers Case Study – My Secrets for Your Growth!
My millennial_dadmy TikTok account gained its first 5,000 followers after 4 months!
I’ll share everything I know about growing a 5,000 audience on TikTok.
So, if you’re looking to grow on TikTok, at the end of this article, you’ll learn:
How many videos should you post on TikTok to grow?
Target 2 high-quality videos a day. The more content you post, the better.
That is how the algorithm for short videos works.
Let’s look at my follower growth chart in the past 60 days:
From my follower growth chart above, we can see 2 bumps in traffic.
These are two periods where I posted content aggressively as I had extra free time.
| Period | Video Posted | Video Topics |
| Nov 12, 2022 | 2 a day | Lifestyle-type videos: Vacationing with baby in Bali, Indonesia Vid 1, Vid 2 |
| Dec 6, 2022 | 2 a day for the next 3 days (6 in total) | Parenting education videos Vid 1, Vid 2, Vid 3, Vid 4, Vid 5, Vid 6 |
Conclusion: Ideally, you need to post 2 or 3 high-value videos a day on TikTok. The more consistent you post 2 or more videos a day, the more rapid your growth.
Which comes as no surprise. However, this also brings its negative.
You’ll need to create A LOT of content all the time.
Without a content strategy, you are very likely to burn out.
But don’t worry. At the end of this article, I’ll share my framework on how you can batch-produce your content.
Next, let’s go over the TikTok content strategy that brought me 5,000 followers in the first place:
What is my current TikTok content strategy?
- Publish 2 videos a day – around 7 am the morning.
- Each video is less than 1 min.
- Each video will only have 1 message to my audience.
- The emotions that I target are Inspiration & motivation.
I want to point out that, unlike YouTube, TikTok video content is more simple & on the surface.
Here’s the difference between YouTube & TikTok videos:
| TikTok | YouTube | |
| Production Quality | Can be more candid & behind the scenes. | The audience expects the video editing to be polished like a TV program. |
| Video length | Keep it less than 1 min. I average around 30 seconds. | Typical YouTube videos are at least 10 mins long (for ad revenue), and YouTube encourages longer videos. |
| Online persona | You don’t have to talk in the videos if you don’t want to. But best if you do. | Your personality must do most of the heavy lifting to connect with your audience. |
YouTube is a whole other game & I’ll talk about that in another post, but next, let’s see which of my TikTok videos performed well:
What content does well on TikTok?
Statistica states that the Entertainment category is the best-performing content category on TikTok.
Find more statistics at Statista
Despite my initial strategy for Millennial_dadmy to be a parenting educational hub for new parents, 100% academic content can be dull & intimidating to casual browsers.
I can’t stress how important it is to wrap up your educational message entertainingly, so it is digestible to the masses.
Below are 3 of my top-performing TikTok videos & why I think they did well:
@millennial_dadmy Setiap kali sebelum & selepas baby tidur, kami selalu bacakan children’s book. Ada banyak yang kami beli. Dr Seuss pun ada. Tapi yang dia paling suka adalah buku: Where is baby’s Belly Button book. Dia macam flip book. Mmg sesuai utk infant kurang 1 tahun. Apakah fav buku utk baby korang? cuba komen dibawah👇#parenting #childrensbook #whereisbabysbellybutton ♬ Paper Birds – Jordan Halpern Schwartz
Video Title
My child’s favorite bedtime flip book.
What was the key message in the video?
The audience likes to hear personal recommendations from a real parent & not someone trying to make a sale.
Engagement activities:
- 265 people bookmarked this video for their future reference.
- People commented on what’s their child’s fav book.
- People were asking where to buy the books in the comments. Which, I told them to click the link in my bio.
| Video duration | 54 seconds |
| Time to edit | 30 minutes |
@millennial_dadmy Harini saya nak share 2 method utk burpkan baby setiap kali lepas minum susu. Kalau tak burpkan, takut dia muntah nanti. So method 1 ni, nurse dekat hospital bersalin tu ajar. Nampak macam cekik baby, tapi bukan. Method kedua ni over the shoulder. Yang ni senang tapi kena hati2 takut baby drool atas baju. Ada cara lain ke? Cuba komen dibawah👇#parenting #parentingtips #burpthebaby ♬ Pieces (Solo Piano Version) – Danilo Stankovic
Video Title
2 ways to burp a baby after feeding
What was the key message in the video?
This may seem like basic information, but believe it or not, many people love consuming beginner content.
Engagement activities:
- 305 people bookmarked this video for their future reference.
- People commented on their experiences with each method. Generally a positive crowd.
| Video duration | 34 seconds |
| Time to edit | 10 mins |
Video Title
Bonding idea: Reading a book before work.
What was the key message in the video?
The video gave the audience relatable ideas on how to entertain & bond with their baby every morning before going to work.
Engagement activities:
- 448 people bookmarked this video for their future reference.
- People commented on their reading routine & also how to start with their baby.
| Video duration | 34 seconds |
| Time to edit | 15 mins |
When is the best time to post your TikTok videos?
If you were to Google ‘best times to post TikTok videos,’ a bunch of articles would tell you to post at a specific time each day.
But do you believe this data? I don’t. Where do these articles get the data in the first place?
A better way to approach this is to look at your TikTok analytics, which will be different for each creator.
Go to your TikTok app or on your desktop & click on Creator Tools/Business Suites > Analytics.
When is the best day to post?
According to my data, it doesn’t matter which day of the week:
What is the best time to post each day, then?
According to my data, my audience is on TikTok as early as 6 am & peaks around 8 pm.
I decided to post my 2 videos daily at around 7 am from my data.
But in all honesty, I tried posting at 7 am, noon & 6 pm. I could not get a conclusive answer on when is the best time to post on TikTok.
So I am sticking to my data, publishing content at 7 am.
How to beat the TikTok algorithm – Honest answer
From my experience, the TikTok algorithm is a wild card.
The algorithm seems to give equal opportunity for each creator to go viral.
Therefore, it’s hard to predict or guarantee what will go viral.
But good for you if you’re new to TikTok.
You have more of a chance of being discovered on TikTok as a new creator vs. on Instagram or YouTube.
Using popular hashtags, trending music & captions do work to some extent.
But in all honesty, the framework that I use to get views & 5,000 followers is simple:
- Create content that is worth viewing
- Create topics that are relevant to the mass market
- Target an emotion your content can trigger
- Create A LOT of content & try to be consistent
If you’re finding it hard to digest any of the points, leave a comment at the bottom of this blog post to let me know what to dive deeper into.
Next, the best part of being a TikTok creator:
3 ways to make money on TikTok
As of this writing, there are 3 ways I’m making money on TikTok:
- TikTok affiliate (you need to register as a TikTok Seller).
- Involve Asia affiliate income from the link in my bio.
- Brand deals, where they ask me to promote their product in exchange for free stuff.
As of now, I have not reached out for direct brand deals, which is what I plan to explore more in the future.
2 things that might kill your TikTok progress
I’d recommend TikTok for beginners, but it’s nowhere near perfect.
If you only plan to make TikTok your only platform to distribute your content, you must be aware of the following problems that you WILL FACE:
#1: It’s incredibly tiring to create a lot of content
If you want to be a TikTok creator, you need to play the numbers game.
There’s no way around it & I mean daily publishing.
If you plan to only post 1 video a week, then maybe YouTube might be a better place for you.
The best thing I can advise to prevent you from burning out & going crazy is to plan & batch your content production & schedule them out in advance.
Here’s how I do it:
- Sit down & plan out all the content ideas.
- I usually batch-shoot videos.
- Then I batch edit videos (6 videos in a day).
- Then I schedule 2 videos a day for the next 3 days.
#2: I think long videos are better than short videos
I’m starting to feel that relying 100% on short videos for your brand might not be the brightest idea.
Because you constantly need to churn out new content to keep up with the algorithm.
However, relying only on long-form videos like YouTube might take a long time to take off.
So what do you do?
I think the best content strategy is to utilize both long-form & short-form together in a systemized marketing funnel.
Create the long-form video first, then reshoot bits of that long-form video as short TikTok videos.
I will experiment more on this & report back in my future case studies. So if you haven’t subscribed to my email list, you can do so here.
What is my next strategy on TikTok?
- I want to start with long-form, in-depth videos on YouTube, then repurpose those into TikTok videos.
- I want to expand ways to monetize with brand deals. Instead of waiting for them to approach me, I want to be more proactive to reach out to them.
- I want to recommend more parenting services (kids classes) over products.
How to start TikTok as a side project without burning out
If you want to start out on TikTok, it could be overwhelming.
But if you do it right, it’s incredibly rewarding.
If you’re looking to grow, I hope this case study has been helpful.
If you’re new to TikTok, I recommend you read how to get your first 1,000 followers on TikTok first.
If you need private coaching to grow your TikTok account, do contact me here.