Building the best hashtag strategy to grow on TikTok
Going viral on social media is sort of a formula. It’s a lot of consistent hard work, great storytelling, timing, and honestly – luck. Yes, unfortunately. Some of us are luckier than others, much like life. However, of all the social media platforms operating right now, TikTok is your best platform to go viral on, and thankfully there are some mechanisms you can use to help you get your content discovered. In this blog post, we’re going to talk about developing a TikTok strategy and some best practices to consider.
How to identify your niche on TikTok
This is the biggest, most obvious tip for using hashtags. If you are new to TikTok, you’ll learn soon enough that there are a few topics that are really popular on the platform. Some of these topics/niches include entertainment, dance, pranks, fitness, DIY/home, beauty, fashion, cooking, advice, pets, nature, according to a 2022 report by Statista. Everyone’s “For You Page” (FYP) is different. It’s based on our individual preferences and viewing habits. The trends I see most consistently on my “FYP” are finance, relationships, social media strategy, comedy, and food. So once you identify what your niche is, you’ll be able to start figuring out what hashtags to use. A good cheat code is that you can generally add the word “tok” to the end of most topics, and that will likely be a relevant hashtag on the platform. For example, foodtok, moneytok, and beautytok are some popular hashtags on TikTok.
How do you find relevant TikTok hashtags?
Finding hashtags can be pretty easy on TikTok. One of the quickest ways is to do the following:
Launch the TikTok app
Navigate to the “Discover” page at the bottom of your screen.
The discover page will show you what’s trending on the platform currently from trending hashtags to trending sounds.
You can also search hashtags in the search bar above.
Another way to discover hashtags is by drafting a post. As you are about to post your video on TikTok, you can start typing a hashtagged word, and it will show you similar hashtags using the same word. For example, if you typed #dating, the app will also pull up #datingtok, #datingtips, #datingadvice, and a variety of other similar hashtags. Personally, I like to scan my options here and pick the hashtags that have the lowest views.
Should you use social media analytics tools to find relevant TikTok hashtags?
I don’t recommend this option because TikTok has some of the most transparent analytics compared to any other social media platform that I’ve used. You can easily find relevant hashtags and their usage through the discover app. Hootsuite, a social media dashboard and analytics app, published a list of top 100 hashtags on TikTok, which you can look through, but I don’t recommend using most of them because many of them are too broad and overused to be effective in your content discovery strategy.
Use hashtags other content creators are using on TikTok
This is a very effective strategy. There’s nothing more informative than seeing what other content creators in your niche are using and replicating their strategy. TikTok actually encourages this. The app has a culture of content creators remixing ideas with their own original twists. If you see content creators you admire, look through their videos and check out what hashtags they are using. If you find hashtags that are relevant to your niche, brand, or business, use them.
Learn what hashtags TikTok audiences are using
Some niches have a very strong sense of community. For instance, avid readers on the platform generally post content using #booktok. It’s an incredibly popular hashtag and that’s because the community actively participates in using the hashtag themselves. TikTok isn’t just a platform to broadcast your content, you want to invite audiences to engage and interact with your content. Therefore, seek out what audiences are already using and that will inform your strategy.
Use hashtags that have less than a million views
It might seem counter-intuitive, but it’s better to add less popular hashtags for your content, as long as they are relevant because it raises the possibility that if your content does go viral, you’ll have a chance for your video to be “at the top of the hashtag.” That means when someone visits that hashtag page to see other videos that have used that same hashtag, there might be a chance that your video ranks at the top, which will add to your views. For instance, I post many videos about love, relationships, and understanding people. One of the hashtags I consistently use in my content is #findinglove. When I first started using the hashtag it had a little over a million views. The hashtag related to my content, I was talking about dating, marriage, and relationships, and therefore when some of my relationship videos eventually went viral, a few of them ranked at the top of the hashtag.
Should you use #FYP, #ForYou, or #ForYouPage when posting on TikTok?
No. Definitely don’t tag your videos with #FYP or #ForYouPage. This doesn’t help your content get discovered, no matter how many TikTok “strategists” on the platform claim it does, it doesn’t. It doesn’t help the algorithm identify what your content is, so it won’t help you get reach relevant audiences.
Should you make your own TikTok hashtag?
Yes! If you want to create a sense of community and you are consistently posting onto your channel, it could be a good idea to create your own hashtag. There are a few brands and businesses that have done this well, such as Fenty Beauty. Fenty uses hashtags like #FENTYICON and #ICONENERGY regularly, which have about 3 million views and 4.4 million views, respectively. If you visit those hashtag pages, you’ll see other beauty bloggers using those hashtags whenever they are reviewing Fenty products.
Should you use TikTok’s promoted hashtags?
If you start posting on TikTok, you’ll notice that there is usually a sponsored hashtag, denoted in blue, that is being promoted by TikTok. Brands oftentimes buy these sponsorships and want to encourage social media users on the platform to use their sponsored hashtags. I like to include generally one sponsored hashtag in my post, and I look at including the one that has the least amount of views because it means it is just started to be used by content creators. Sometimes, you’ll see hashtags with more than 10 billion views, which is a lot, even for TikTok. There isn’t a hard science for whether you should use a sponsored hashtag that has that many views, because, for instance, the Olympics can garner those kinds of numbers, but generally, I try to go for smaller hashtags, even when they are sponsored.
How many hashtags should I include in my post?
No more than 5 hashtags are generally recommended, and I agree. This is one of the biggest differences between developing a hashtag strategy for TikTok as opposed to Instagram. You’ll see Instagram users flood their posts with 20 or 30 hashtags, and some of them aren’t even relevant to their content. However, there’s a space limitation on TikTok, 100 characters. So generally, you can fit a short caption and about 5 hashtags. Since you have less room for hashtags, that means you need to focus on using relevant hashtags for your content strategy.
And there you have it. Those are the hashtag strategies I used in the past 6 months to grow my TikTok account from zero followers to more than 60,000. These tips are also used by some of the most successful content creators and brands. Implementing is quite easy, you just need to stay consistent. Success might not come overnight, for instance, I didn’t go viral until my 50th post on TikTok, but I kept consistently posting videos and using the hashtag strategy that I outlined above.
Good luck, and let me know how your TikTok journey goes!
