I Tried To Go Viral On TikTok. It Did Not Work.

What to do…

Image from Unsplash (Fang Guo)

Going viral on Tiktok is a huge deal these days. Actually, going viral anywhere online is pretty much the end-goal for most content creators. Well, short-term goal anyway. You want to create something meaningful, useful and long-lasting. But going viral helps. Massively. Both in terms of building an audience, and income.

And I’m no different.

So last year, I joined TikTok.

TikTok

I thought I would offer something different, engaging and exciting. I wanted to connect with people but I wanted my own voice to be heard. I had recently bought a houseboat where I currently live and I thought, why don’t I make full use of that?

I started making videos from the decks of my boat, reviewing several books, films, plays, etc. Short-form videos, with a short paragraph for a review (because we know how people have a short attention span these days), and then a rating. And a super cool, carefully chosen song to go with it, of course. It was fun! I loved making those videos. I got a few views here and there, I followed people and commented on their videos; I engaged and ‘played the game’ as best as I could. I even changed my username to include ‘BookTok’, Tiktok’s ultra-popular trend. It did not work. And it’s been nearly a year.

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