Transcripts
1. INTRODUCTION: Hi, my name is Victor and welcome to this course. I'm excited to share with you steps on how to spot trends on TikTok and how to use trends on tiktok. Essentially, how to leverage trends on tiktok in order to grow following on the platform. So what we're going to be covering in this course is some actionable steps. How to actually find trends on the platform, and how to actually take those trends and apply them onto your niche, onto your account. A huge portion of traffic that goes up and down on tiktok is based on what's currently trending novels training last week. What was trending? Month goal, what's currently trending? Why should you listen to me? I started TikTok just as the pandemic started gaining momentum in 2020 around May and since that time of managed to grow a following of nearly 0.5 million on two separate accounts, though, in my time, I have learned a thing or two while I've been growing this following, who this course is for, I would say is from beginner to intermediate uses. You already know how to post on tiktok, you already know the basics. Hopefully you'll gain something from this course.
2. SETTING EXPECTATIONS: So in terms of setting expectations, There's no specific guaranteed outcomes on this course. I'm not guaranteeing that you're going to get a certain amount of followers. I'm not guaranteeing that you're going to build a community of a specific size. Of course, I don't know you I don't know what you're going to put an end after you've listened, all learned everything that I mentioned in this course is I'm only speaking based on my experience in growing my following over the last just over 12 months or so. And based on case studies that I have observed on the platform, based on certain accounts that I have learned from.
3. CLASS PROJECT: So the class project that I would like you to do, if at all possible, very, very simple. After we've gone through all the information and all the steps on this course, which we will get to shortly. I'd just like you to take a screenshot or take some sort of evidence of you following a trend, newly discovered trend on the Tiktok platform. And if you just post her into the project section, it could be something as simple as here's a screenshot. I'm following this trend on tiktok. And, and you can just put on there the reason why you following the trend that you've seen smaller counts, for example, that have gained a high amount of exposure, that sort of stuff. So very, very simple, very easy. I'm excited to see what you guys do and I'll be checking that in the project section.
4. WHY YOU'RE NOT GROWING: Why you're not growing on tiktok currently. So the reason why a lot of people and a lot of you are failing to grow a following on the Tiktok platform. Quite simply, your being two original wider I know this because I was doing this at the beginning myself, I jumped onto the platform. I started posting or original content without investigating, without looking at what works on the Tiktok platform. Because TikTok is a different communities, a different beast altogether. Just because you've seen what happens on Instagram, just because you've seen what happens on Snapchat, that doesn't necessarily mean that same kind of content is going to work on tiktok. What you need to do is build learning. What works on TikTok, what makes tick tock, tick, and what works within that specific platform. And the easiest and the simple way to do this is quite simply by going through your For You page and seeing what type of content is being promoted by the Tiktok algorithm, what type of content is surfacing over and over again, what type of content is popular on the platform? And that is what works on the tip of the platform. And quite simply, you now need to do is take that content and apply it to your niche, applied to whatever your going to be doing on the platform, whether it's music, whether it's art, whether it's comedy. How can you take that particular song that keeps coming up over and over again and apply it to your communist sketches. How can you take that song and apply it to your art? Do you draw while the song is playing? Do you draw what the song is singing about? Any way that you can take that trend that keeps coming up over and over again and apply it onto your niche. That's how you adapt your content on to what works on. Another really easy and really simple way. Put this into practice and grow your account would be to use built-in features such as a duet, such as stitches. All that means is you take popular videos, popular content that TikTok has already proven that is going audience for, that it serves for that content and Q wetting and stitching that content. Well then happen is that TikTok algorithm is going to associate you with that type of content, diagnose it's already got an audience for, and therefore it's going to serve your content to that audience that already exists. And that's how you get discovered. That's how you get associated with that content. So that's how you then gain exposure. A lot of you aren't doing that. I wasn't doing that at the beginning. If I was doing it, I was doing it with the wrong content and it just wasn't working. I wasn't growing and I was getting frustrated. So in a nutshell, amongst other reasons, that's why most people don't grow on, or businesses don't grow on the platform.
5. WHY TRENDS?: Why use trends on TikTok? So essentially, Tiktok and my eyes is divided into two, is divided into what I like to call to call highways or motorways and what I like to call back roads, alleyways, country lanes. But Rosanna so busy. So essentially you've got a, you've got your motorways are always busy, traffic always going back and forth. And you've got your country lanes, your backgrounds that are not as busy, not a lot of traffic now, essentially, obviously, if you are wanting to grow, you want to be within the motorways, within the highways, because that's where a lot of traffic is. Ironically, in real life, you'd want to be in that situation. But when it comes to growing on tiktok, you want to be there because that's where you're likely to get discovered and that's where a lot of your content is likely to be served and found by the right people. And in my eyes, these motorways translate into trends, follow trends. You're essentially on this motorway, on this highway to success as cheesy as that sounds. And that is where your content is going to get discovered.
6. TYPES OR TRENDS: When it comes to different types of trends, you've got trending posts, you got trending sounds, and you've also got trending hashtags. For example, when it comes to trending sounds, is quite simply if you get posts are coming up on your For You page, where one specific sound keeps coming up and it keeps coming up and it keeps coming up. Then straight away, that should be a light bulb moment in your headline. You know that this is a trending sound. This is something that the TikTok algorithm is pushing at the moment. Why is it pushing a lot? Well, that's simply because a lot of people are responding positively to content that's being created around this sound aloft, TikTok community are liking, commenting, sharing the sending all the right signals to the algorithm, letting it know that these people are interested. This people want to see more or want to hear more when it comes to the sound. And you've probably, it sounds slightly complicated, but you've probably come across hundreds, if not thousands of trending sounds on the Tiktok platforms. You've probably, you've probably heard of musicians, artists out there completely blown up on tiktok and taken that success outside Tiktok on to Spotify, YouTube, apple Music, et cetera. You've probably come across interviews where you listen to the interview of your favorite artists. And artists says, Oh, you know how you discovered, well, a blow-up on Tiktok. That's because that sound became a trending sound on tiktok and it wrote out waive all the way to the second trend type is trending posts. So training post quite simply is when people are posting the same type of post. So for example, an example would be, there's a bottle swinging trend currently, which I've been seeing a lot on my feed. Quite simply, what people do is they blindfold themselves. It could be you and your partner, for example, or you and your friend. You sit facing each other. You've got a bottle of water every is that you put inside and you just swing in this bottle back and forth while you both blindfolded and you dodging it. Whoever the bottle hits, that provides some entertainment value for the viewer, for the audience, in terms of comedy and people somehow enjoy watching us or that's a trending posts. That's a second type of trend that you look out for. Again, if you're seeing something like a lot, that means that post is trending. And the third type of trend is of course, hashtags. If you keep coming across posts that are showing a similar type of hashtag, a big one towards the beginning of Tiktok was of course f yp. We're seeing a lot of people posting and putting hashtag, FIP hashtag For You page on their posts. And it seemed to work for a little while in terms of getting more people discovered doesn't seem to work that much anymore. For if on your For You page, you seeing a lot of people put in the same hashtags on there and they're gaining a lot of exposure very quickly, then that could potentially be a trending hashtag.
7. WHICH TRENDS SHOULD I FOLLOW?: What we're gonna be looking at next is which trans should you follow? So it's all very well knowing the different types of trends that you can look up on the ticks on platform. But what if you come across hundreds of these different types of trends? Which ones should you follow, which ones are going to work for you and your account types of what you should you look for to distinguish the trends that you should use against trends that she just simply afford it down not going to be or provide that much value to you. So what I would say is trend types that you should look out for if that specific type of trend has pushed or seems to be pushing smaller accounts and giving them more exposure than normal. Recently within the last 48 hours, within the last 72 hours, within the last week or so, but quite relatively recently than that is definitely a trend that you should jump on. An example of this would be if, for example, on my account, I've got 5000 followers are usually average around, say, 1000 views, 500 to 1000 views on my posts. Then suddenly I get posts that gets 500 or 0.5 million views are all of a sudden, or I get a post that gets 40 million views, then that will most likely be some sort of trend that has pushed and catapulted my exposure that, so if you look into a trend and you see that, well actually a lot smaller accounts are gaining exposure from this, then that's most likely something that you should consider jumping into as well as you can see with these examples that I'm going to be or I have been throwing up on the screen small accounts that are gaining, gaining ludicrous numbers. That's an indication. And the way that you can see this, of course, is if you, for example, click on whatever sound keeps coming up on your For You page, you just click on to that sound or have a hashtag keeps coming up. If you click on to that hashtag, what you'll notice is other posts that are being put within that hashtag or other posts that are being put within that sound that will then enable you to go into the top accounts, say maybe the top 10 accounts under that sound and you'll be able to see how many followers they've got. Firstly, and secondly, how many views they got and how many likes they got based on using this specific sound and compare that against what they normally, if it's a small account, it's getting more views and likes the normal based on using this sound or hashtag, then that's something that I would say you need to consider seriously jumping on because dies clear working for smaller accounts right now and you don't know how long the trend is going to last for. So jump on to that.
8. WORD OF CAUTION: A word of caution when it comes to spotting trends on tiktok, not all trends work for everyone. So again, it's about taking an aspect of that trend and applying it onto your niche. Might be working for other accounts, but it just might not align perfectly with your niche. For example, my big account currently is on the challenge slash illusion niche. If I see a trend, for example, that works within comedy, and it's pushing up a lot of comedies, small comedy accounts that's not necessarily going to work for me and my type of content. Yes, I can maybe try using that sound. Yes, I could maybe try using that post type. But because the algorithm is used to pushing my content to a certain type of audience, it might not work for me. So again, like anything is about assistance, about keeping trying, and it's about finding a way of using that trend for your niche, adapting it to your niche. Bonus power tip would be if you're within a certain niche, if you will then comment niche, for example, study the big accounts within that niche. If you go into your favorite, say 2, 3, 4, or 5 creators that are bigger than you within that niche, look at their most recent posts, and this happens a lot with comedy accounts. They tend to use the same sound 345 or six times within their most recent posts if that works. So if you know it's a favorite creator, his use the same sound 34567 times in a row. And that's all those posts into the get inconsistent views and consistent exposure. And that's within your niche, then there's no reason why that wouldn't help your account gain more exposure as well. Because firstly, you within that same niche using a trending sound or a training post that has been proven to work within that niche. You know that the TikTok algorithm knows where to push content that's associated with that trending sound, trending hashtag or trending posts because you've seen that being done by your favorite bigger creators. So that's an even better opportunity to spot a trend and use that trend as opposed to just using a general trend that's just being used by lots of different types of accounts. So that's a bonus tip there would encourage you to put into practice, give that a try and see if it works for your account.
9. ACTIONABLE STEPS: Some more actionable steps in terms of how you can spot a trend on TikTok. So essentially I'm gonna give you three tips. The first one I would say is to type and search for the hashtag or the word trend, watch. Trend, watch on a TRO this up on the screen somewhere. And what's going to happen is you're going to see a number of craters are going to come up which essentially watch trends. What they do and what they like to do is post on their pages because these are people who see themselves as helping others grow on tiktok. Some of them have big accounts, big followings, millions, some of them don't have as much, but these are people who generally post content to help other creators grow on tiktok. And part of the content they post is what's called Trend watches, which essentially means that person is looking out for trends that are helping small accounts grow on tiktok. And if you go into those people's accounts and look at their most recent trend watch or trend alert posts where they tell the tittle community what sound, what post type or watch hashtag seems to be pushing a lot of smaller accounts higher up in terms of exposure. That's one way to spot trends and then determining if he can make that trend work for your account. Now, the second method for spotting what's trending is why call the method? And this is the most, by far fun way of spotting trends because all it involves is just scrolling through your For You page. I'm noticing, if any, not only are you enjoying watching the content that's on there, It's also looking out for what keeps coming up over and over again. Post types that keep coming up over again. Types of sounds that keep coming up over and over again. And essentially quite simply, if you get one type of sound that keeps coming up over and over again, obviously, the algorithm is pushing this out. Obviously that's a trend. It's about going into that sound again and checking if you can see any small accounts that again, higher exposure than normal recently under that sound. And if that is something that's happening, that's definitely a trend that you should consider jumping onto. And thirdly, another really simple way to spot trends on tiktok is looking at your popular fits. So a lot of people tend to miss this. I missed this quite a lot. You could have by mistake created the type of post that works on tiktok that TikTok has an audience for, and that's also part of a trend without realizing it. So if you go back and look at your recent videos, have you got any videos that I have performed better than normal, more likes than normal, more views than normal. And that means that Tik Tok has found an audience for that type of post at that could be a trend as well. Meaning that could be something that you need to create, potentially recreate a fresh spin on it, and repost something similar in future. So always go back and check your previous posts. If you haven't got a creator account, make sure that you've got create a recount so you can view your analytics and check what posts have been trending over the last seven days, which TikTok does tend to show you within your analytics. So once again, in summary, you want to do the trend watch method where you type in trend watch and see if there's any trend alerts that you can make the most of. You also want to use the method where you go through your For You page and see what port suppose types of sounds keep coming up over and over again. And finally, you want to check your popular posts as well and see if you got any posts that have performed better than average, better than normal, and other bonus power tip, pretty obvious one that is also your Explore page on tiktok, which is essentially the Tiktok homepage on your feed, where Tiktok shows you what sounds are trending, hashtags are trending. That's another quite simple or easy way to see what's been popping on tiktok as such. And seeing if you can leverage that a lot of the time doesn't tend to work a lot because a lot of the time, these are trends that I've already hit their peak, so to speak. So I've never really found much success in using that. But you never know if there's a very recent trend on there, even though it's, it has gone past its peak in ever know that if you could find one that works for you or if there's one particular trend that's lasting longer than normal.
10. CLOSING: So in closing, I hope you found this course useful. I'm excited once again to see what projects you guys have put within the project section. Once again, hope you guys found this useful. Any questions you have, let me know. It's been a pleasure sharing this information with you. And I will see you in the next course.
Victor Loyiso, Youtuber / Content Creator / Musician
