With 2.6 billion downloads and 1.1 billion active users, TikTok has become the most popular app in 2020 and 2021. TikTok is known for making songs such as “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, “Uno” by Ambjaay, “Leave the door open” by Bruno Mars, and many other songs popular. TikTok creates the perfect environment for both underground and established artists to make their songs a viral sensation.
So, if you are an upcoming musician and you are looking for a way to propel your music on TikTok and get your song heard by 100,000 to millions of people, then keep reading this post. In this post, we will share the tip and tricks you need to understand TikTok music marketing.
If you are ready, let’s dive into it.
Why TikTok Is A Breeding Ground For Emerging Artists:
As stated earlier, TikTok has made many songs popular across the globe. It is a platform where people predominantly between the ages of 16 to 44 years old go to make short entertaining videos. This combine with its 1.1 billion monthly active users means TikTok is capable of making any song in any genre a viral sensation.
Some of the most popular entertainment videos people make on the platform include song imitations, social media challenges, and dance challenges. This makes TikTok the perfect platform for musicians to promote and get their songs to reach their ideal audience.
TikTok Music Promotion:
Join The Hype
The first way you can promote yourself as an artist on TikTok is to join the hype. What I mean by this is to join the trends on TikTok. You do not want to go on TikTok just because you want to get your music viral. You want to make sure that you have enough followers before you start promoting your music.
So, you want your first aim on TikTok to be about getting followers instead of getting your music out there. For musicians, I highly recommend you participate in two trends: lip-syncing and dance challenges(if you can). These two activities are sure-bet ways to get views on TikTok.
Participating in music challenges is a free way to bring attention to you. People aren’t going to pay attention to your videos if you are some random artist. However, if you can join challenges, TikTok will promote you to pages of their users, and when the users see your content and they like it, they will follow you.
When choosing a song to lip-sync to or dance to, you can go either of two ways. First, you can choose to lip-sync to a popular song and relevant song. Or, you can join the masses and perform any trending music challenge.
However, you do not want to be limited to only musical challenges. If you can participate in other challenges, go for it. The whole idea here is to gain as many followers as possible.
Give Tips and Advice
You do not want your content to be only about challenges, you want to also give tips on TikTok. If you are a producer, a drummer, or a vocalist, you can share some tips on how you became a musician or a drummer. The whole idea here is to make sure that you give value. TikTok allows for a maximum of 3 minutes long videos. So, you must keep your content concise, accurate, informative, and entertaining.
One way to make your videos engaging is by add words to your videos. Also, you want to make sure that you change your background or make the background lively by using LED lights. Changing your background can be as simple as walking while giving out some tips.
So, you want to use the first two tips to gather the following you need for your success on TikTok.
Use Your Song And Frame It Right
Once, you start having enough followers, it is time to share your music with them. The first way to do this is to use your song as background music while you do something creative. The trick here is that you want to make sure that what you do relates to the song.
For example, if your song is about love, you can simply post a video of yourself with someone else doing something romantic while you have your song playing in the background. If your song is about heartbreak, you want to make a video of yourself crying while the song plays in the background. The video doesn’t have to be anything expensive.
Doing this will help your followers connect with the song easily. It is important to note that you do not want to make only one video and expect it to go viral. You want to make several videos with the same song because doing this will let your followers and other viewers fall in love with your song even more. With the videos, you want to make sure that you make them in different locations; however, the setting of each video should reflect what your song is about.
Making a video that depicts the meaning of your song is an easy way for people to understand what your song is about and resonate with the song easily.
The goal here is to get people to connect and then use the song to create similar videos as you did. This is why we recommended you build an audience by joining challenges and joining trends.
Make A Challenge
After posting two or three videos of your music, you want to check the analytics of those videos. You want to make sure you check the comments and likes you had for the videos with your song in the background.
Compare the likes and comments to your regular TikTok videos. When you realize videos with your song have a good number of likes and comments then it means people love the song.
When you notice that people love the song through the analytics, then you want to leverage that and start a challenge.
Before you start the challenge, you want to make sure that you have had at least ten people requesting the title of the song you used(which is your song). This would tell you that people loved the song.
When you realize some of the followers are requesting the title of your song, then it is time to leverage that and start a challenge.
To do this, you want to inform your subscribers that they can participate in your music challenge by using certain hashtags, making a video with your song or sound in the background, and then tagging you.
Ensure that you entice them to participate by giving a prize to anyone who has the most views. Trust me; you would be surprised about the number of people that will participate.
In addition, you want to look through your followers, and then select a couple of people with the highest TikTok followers. The idea here is to get people who have a high audience reach.
After selecting them, you want to make sure you send them a message telling them how well your song has done, and that you would love for them to help you promote a challenge you want to create.
Make sure to encourage them to participate. Because when they participate and their followers see them creating videos with your song, their followers will also do the same, and from there, your song will start going viral.
Whenever someone tags you with the name of your challenge and the hashtag, you want to make sure that you repost that on your TikTok page and other social media page for other audiences to see. Also, doing this will encourage more people to join the challenge.
Do not forget to send the link to your music to tons of people and encourage them to participate.
Finally, make sure that you send the song to other upcoming musicians like you on TikTok and encourage them to participate as well.
Update Your Bio
When your challenge starts gaining momentum, then it is time for you to update and optimize your TikTok bio. To do this, you want to optimize your TikTok bio with the hashtags you created, and also, do not forget to leave a link to your music on your Channel’s bio.
It is crucial to update your bio because when people visit your page and realize you are the originator of that challenge, they’ll love to listen to your music, and they will do this through the music link on your bio.
Utilize Influencers
Influencers are a great way to get your music to the masses. This is because they understand their followers and know the type of videos their followers will react to. People love to participate in the challenges their influences do. So, if you want to skip the hard work or add to what you have already done, then we recommend you utilize influencers.
Team Up
We recommend you team up with other TikTok creators that have almost the same followers as you do. Or you can team up with creators that have a little more subscribers than you do. Do not try to reach out to a TikToker with 1 million subscribers when you have 100k subscribers because they might probably not respond.
If you have 100k subscribers, you want to reach out to TikTok creators who have 120k or 200k subscribers. These creators will most likely respond.
Also, make sure that the person you want to collaborate with creates the same musical content as you do.
Using Keywords For The Algorithm
Understanding how the TikTok algorithm works is a guaranteed way to growing your music career on TikTok. Just like any other social media platform, TikTok has an algorithm that looks out for certain features in the videos you create to help propels your content when you incorporate these stuff in your videos.
By understanding how the algorithm works, you have a competitive advantage over other content creators who just create content with no idea about any algorithm.
However, it is important to note that you need to create good content before trying to integrate some of the features I am to share with you. Without good content, it will be quite difficult for the algorithm to work in your favor.
The best way to get the TikTok Algorithm to work in your favor is to use keywords and hashtags.
Using Keywords and Hashtags:
Keywords are incredibly important on TikTok. Just like any search engine or social media page, TikTok uses keywords to help its algorithm place your content in the right category or niche. By placing keywords in your video, you get to reach a more targeted organic audience. This can help you get your content to the screens of people that matter the most. So, as a musician looking to promote your music or career on TikTok, you want to make sure that you incorporate keywords in your videos.
People go on TikTok to search for challenges, trends, and users. So, if you want your music brand to pop up on the search results, you must incorporate relevant keywords into your TikTok videos.
TikTok creators incorporate these keywords in their videos in three ways:
- The first way is to use them as hashtags when writing the title of the video. Ensure that you add 4 to 5 different variations of that hashtag to your video to help you rank better. You must add hashtags that are relevant to your video to help you appear on relevant results.
- Another way to optimize these keywords for a higher ranking and better organic reach is to use them in the description section of your video.
- Also, if you can say them in your video, go ahead and say these keywords.
- Finally, you want to use these keywords in your caption.
How To Find these hashtags or keywords:
You can simply take a look at some of the best TikTok music channels that are doing well, and then write down the keywords they use. You want to make sure that you choose ten of the hashtags that make sense to your video.
After writing down the keywords from these music channels, the next step is to ensure that these keywords are generating much traffic.
To do this, type in that keyword phrase into the search bar. When the results pop up, tap on the “Hashtag” tab. The hashtag tab is located under the search bar. The hashtag tab displays the number of views that keyword has. It will also display other related keywords and the number of views of those keywords. So, you want to choose the best keyword that best fits your videos with the right amount of views.
Repost Videos
Yes, this is probably the easiest way to gain more traction with your music channel. TikTok allows you to repost people’s content. However, the caveat here is to make sure the creator hasn’t copyrighted their video. If a creator copyrights or trademarks their video, you want to make sure that you give the creator credit. However, we highly recommend you give credit to the creator of any video you repost.
So, if you notice that there is a specific video that is doing extremely well on TikTok, you want to make sure that you repost that video on your page or create similar content to that video and to help you get more followers. For example, if you notice that a video has gotten 200k likes, it probably means that the video has over or close to a million views. So, you want to repost videos like these. However, do not forget to ask the creator for their consent before doing so, and give them credit. Also, make sure that you incorporate the keywords they used in that video into your video as well.
However, we highly recommend you create your versions of these hit videos. You can recreate videos by using the same sound the original video used. You can also use the same dance steps used, or the caption, etc. However, you want to put your twist on it.
Another way to look at reposting videos is to repost them on your IG reels. So, you can repost your TikTok videos on IG to grow your music audience there as well. By doing this, you wouldn’t have to worry about creating content for IG for your music. This way, you can create engaging videos to boost your music career on both platforms.
You can repost videos from trending shows. For example, you can repost compilations of Justin Bieber’s best moments on the Saturday Live Show or Ellen’s show. Or you can repost a video of some of Micheal Jackson’s best moments on stage. With this, you want to repost videos of relevant musicians to help you get the engagement.
Finally, you want to make sure you repost your best videos. Trust me, you can post a video the first time, and it wouldn’t do that well, but when you repost it, you would be shocked as to the views and engagement you get on that video. So, instead of reposting other people’s content, you want to make sure that you repost some of your best videos. You want to wait for 72 hours before you repost any of your videos.
Generally, when reposting a video, make sure that you keep the watermark on. Removing the watermark using a third-party app can drastically affect the quality of the video. And when the quality of the video is low, the algorithm might be hesitant on sharing your video with any audience.
Use TikTok Live
TikTok live is a new feature by TikTok that allows you to engage with your audience live. So, as a music artist, you can use this as an opportunity to show your audience some live music sessions, or premier a new cover, or your new song.
We highly recommend TikTok live due to three reasons:
The first is that TikTok live allows you to get more interactive and grow your audience. Because with live video you get to interact with the audience that cares about your music and brand. This allows you to get to know your audience better and vice versa. Also, with TikTok live, you aren’t just limited to the 1 minute or three minutes videos you regularly post. With live videos, you get to share more about your music career. Live videos also give more insight into what you do and answer some questions. Through this, your audience can get to know you more, and you get to know them more.
With TikTok live, video creators can raise donations. This can be a great way to solicit funds to support your music career.
The final reason why TikTok live is important is because when people stream your live video, it signals to TikTok that you can keep people engaged. This can drastically boost your engagement signals which trigger the TikTok algorithm to propagate your videos channel and videos to the masses. Through this, your videos can rank more on the “For You” page, which can immensely boost the audience you reach, which means more people get to see your TikTok videos, and you get more followers.
Ask People To Follow You
You want to make sure that you always ask people to engage with your content. You do not want to say it out loud; however, you want to post a call for action that will compel them to follow and like your videos. What you can do to compel people is to create your videos in parts, for example, part 1, part 2, and part 3. Then ask people to like and follow you if they want to see part 2 of that video and part 3. People will be eager to follow you if they like the first part of the video. So, you want to make sure that you make the first part super engaging, and you always want to leave your audience anticipating more.
