In My TikTok Era
I posted on TikTok every day for 10 months in 2023. Here's what I learned.
The first viral video I ever made for TikTok was about a sponge.
I noticed that the Scrub Daddy was being sold at the trendy boutique Merci in the Marais, and I had also seen it perched on a museum-like shelf of items representing US culture at an American gas station-themed cafe in the 17th. It seemed that in Paris, the Scrub Daddy telegraphed American ephemera, and had become an icon of American tastes and culture abroad. I narrated these findings in a voice-over video, and tapped Post before I went to bed.
By the time I woke up, the video had climbed to 20,000 views. For an account with about 10 total followers, it already felt like the big-time.
Over the next few days, it accumulated over 230,000 views and more than 13,000 comments. My adrenaline was pumping.
In 2023, I dared myself to post on TikTok every day for six months, but I didn’t expect anything like this—and definitely not so soon after starting.
This six month dare became a daily ritual for almost 10 months of last year. From January to November 2023, with the exception of seven non-consecutive days, I posted a video to TikTok every day—a total of 284 days.
Here’s what I learned.
The Dare
It started with my 2023 new year’s resolution: to shorten the distance between having an idea and doing a thing. In business speak, it’s “bias for action.”
It was a way to foster experimentation, so that I could increase my creative output without holding my ideas as precious. I wanted to spend less time questioning or judging my own thoughts, and just bring them to life in small, habitual ways on a regular basis.
I wanted a sandbox to test ideas and fortify my creative confidence.
Even though there were plenty of habits I could have targeted to cultivate these characteristics, I had also identified a second problem to solve in 2023. For the first time, there were social media communities and behaviors that felt non-native and unintuitive to me. Even though I had been working on the internet since I was 18 years old, think about the internet a lot and had started managing social media communities around the same time, I realized that I was adept at navigating text-based (like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, newsletters) and image-based (Instagram) social platforms, but my video-making skills were lacking.
For the first time, I was non-native to the internet platforms where culture circulated, and I didn’t like it at all.
Not to mention, the startup in which I work builds AI software for gaming streamers and influencers to create short-form video from their multi-hour streams so they can share these clips to Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok and ultimately grow faster. One component of my job is user research to inform product development and strategy. Yet when I would chat with content creators, I knew my follow-up questions lacked the sharpness that comes when you instinctively understand the process inside and out because you’ve done it before. I wanted this to change.
I’m a strong believer that there's no better way to understand how tools work, and how contribution to a social network operates than to do it yourself. It helps cultivate intuition. This was my chance to figure it out—to test and learn, while shedding self-consciousness in the process.
The Learning Curve
My first videos were embarrassing.
The first video I ever posted to TikTok, in early January of 2023, was barely a video at all. I chose an easy template from the gentle TikTok onboarding. It animates a few photos into a video. I chose three stills from a scenic hike in Scotland, set the loop to a trending song, and pressed Post.
It was very clear that I had no idea what I was doing.
I tried a second one. This time I wanted to replicate what I was seeing in my feed: snappy headlines and declarative overlay text. I tried it out with another goofy template. This post, about Comer, one of my favorite Paris restaurants, is also pretty embarrassing—a weird photo montage with weirder transitions set to Bad Bunny.
After the first few videos, I broke free from templates and my mimicry was taking more recognizable shape into identifiable TikTok videos. I discovered the voice-over and subtitling features, and was starting to understand what the arc of a video might look like.
I debated whether I wanted to show my face—considering privacy concerns and questionable data practices at TikTok—but decided that, while the facecam wouldn’t be a cornerstone of content I could sustainably make, it was part of the testing and learning process. Not to mention that if I really wanted to be a stickler about internet security, that ship likely sailed long ago.
With each video, I was getting progressively better at the specific skill of making videos for TikTok. And when I couldn't figure out how to nail a specific technique, I used TikTok search to help me fill in the gaps: how to add a geotag, how to record a voiceover, how to enable text-to-speech to sound like Jessie, what supporting apps people use to make content for this platform (e.g., CapCut, Answer the Public), and so on.
Learning the Algorithm
The best way to learn how to make videos on TikTok is by studying and dissecting the other videos on the platform. They all follow a similar structure: a "hook" in the first three seconds that grabs your attention and makes you stick around to learn the rest, the setup (an explanation of why the creator is addressing this topic), and finally the payoff. It sounds simple but more than any other platform, attention spans on TikTok are short, particularly because the algorithm is extremely well-tailored, so if the content doesn’t resonate with you, you just move on.
TikTok is really broadcast television. You’re constantly flipping through the channels by swiping—the one active gesture required by consumers—and the addictiveness is in knowing you’re one swipe away from a video that has you in stitches laughing. Videos like that get sent around in DMs. You might even comment. But it’s not necessarily content from your friends; it’s the content you most want to see.
The rumored way that TikTok decides how much reach a video should get relies on concentric circles of test groups. First, TikTok shows your video to 10 people, and sees how those first 10 people engage with your video. How long are they watching the video for? Did they comment on it? Did they like it? Did they share it? Did they save it? TikTok gives you the stats to find out what is and isn't working about your video. In my experience, >30% completion rate is solid; the best performers have well over 55% completion rates and many comments or saves.
The absolute best way to take advantage of this is to target an extremely specific niche and saturate it — the way you would with an SEO hub-and-spoke approach. It gives the TikTok algorithm a better sense of the precise first test group, and catalogs it for search, which is a fundamental feature and ambition of the platform.
When I started out, it was important to me that I didn't let an audience determine what I posted about. It was supposed to be my sandbox. My goal was to explore my own creativity and see what, if anything, resonated. The goal was not to grow fast and accumulate an audience; that strategy requires “the niche.”
Finding a Flow to Post Daily
After the Scrub Daddy video went viral, I analyzed it again and again to understand what worked about it. It's harder to analyze what worked rather than to tear apart what didn't. It was a potent combination of a TikTok-famous product, that's born out of hustle culture (it's on an infamous Shark Tank episode) and the American dream, that's a mass market enough household item to connect with a wide audience, taken out of its usual setting and put in a specific and haughty enough context (a posh boutique in central Paris), and connected to a broader trend or phenomenon. It had a funny, trending sound that let you know that I was in on the joke, and a solid voiceover that sounded like I was whispering my innermost thoughts to you—which I was.
In my experience, the perfect TikTok video is one that is uses an extremely specific anecdote or visualization to speak to a broader idea, problem, or trend that is extremely universal. It's a simple enough statement, but not easy to execute on consistently.
I realized pretty quickly that attempting to post every day on TikTok required the same organizational skills as keeping a content calendar anywhere else.
To post everyday, I only made a few minor changes to my life. The first was capturing more video footage than photos in my daily life. I also stockpiled any old video footage in an Album on my phone called TikTok B-Roll. This meant that I could mine the folder whenever I needed to fill my channel.
I rarely captured new footage with a storyline in mind. I knew I could create a storyline as long as I had more than seven seconds of camera footage to accompany a voiceover. Around seven seconds is the length that hits the algorithm well for a super short video; for talking head videos, TikTok is trending longer, closer to one to three minutes (and perhaps even longer as TikTok chases YouTube). For days when I didn’t feel like recording my voice, I could compile short snippets of video linked only by vibes.
Here’s what I did:
By stockpiling footage, I always had videos on my camera roll to pull from.
I started saving songs I liked or trending songs that captured certain vibes (irreverent, “aesthetic,” wtf, etc.) or audio snippets that I could use to manufacture a storyline when I didn't have one ready (e.g., a snippet of a Blair Waldorf quote from Gossip Girl about Paris, or a passionate monologue from an urbanist about walkable cities)
Whenever I landed on a storyline, I'd stitch together the videos I had on my Camera Roll and save them to my TikTok Drafts. At any given time, there were between one to ten videos living in Drafts.
Usually for about 15 minutes a day, I'd click on one of the videos in my Drafts, and look through my Favorite sounds and see if any lined up.
If they did, I'd trim the videos directly in the TikTok editor to sync with the way I wanted the video to feel. Sometimes Sound Sync (the auto-sync feature that matches video cuts to song beats built into TikTok) worked, but often I wanted the images to change faster and create more of a fast-moving montage effect that felt truer to how I saw it in my mind. Sometimes the video footage would change every 0.3s, sometimes 0.7s, and for more of a pensive feel, I maintained 1.0s.
I wasn't very big into CapCut templates or trending templates. I used CapCut sometimes if I wanted to color correct video footage on my phone, but I found that my videos were easier to maneuver on the mobile editor on TikTok.
I tried to treat each video like a mini diary—to capture a fleeting thought or moment I had that day, even if it was super mundane—like the first day in February when the sun shines and it feels like spring, or what work lunch feels like in a Parisian office.
These many small steps helped ensure that I wouldn't get to the end of the day empty-handed. It made the goal into a habit, and made it both doable and sustainable.
I always had something to post, the question was whether I was okay with posting videos that were very simple. I had to relinquish the impulse to edit and perfect indefinitely. Sometimes, on-screen text over a 0.5s video performed a lot better than a face cam monologue. It can really be that simple.
Going Viral More Regularly
Most of my videos did not hit, stuck in a 300-400 view purgatory, and I never broke past 780ish followers. But many did hit.
My biggest viral video is at 3.6M views. I took it on a flight from CDG to JFK and took a few short videos showcasing how empty the plane was. When I landed, I recorded a short voiceover of what was going through my head at the time. It was just specific enough—it was my specific flight and my lived experience after all—and just relatable enough—everyone wishes this happened to them on a long-haul flight in economy—that it popped.
That video also gave me a taste of how stressful interacting with thousands of commenters can be. In the voiceover, I say: "the flight was completely empty." I meant it colloquially; there are a few people visible in the video footage and I counted maybe five total people on the whole flight. The commenters ripped me apart: "I SEE OTHER PEOPLE." Others pressed to ask why I wasn't upgraded to business. In my mind, it was just one of many daily videos I was posting without much oversight. It showed me the perils of TikTok growth, and how the new breed of internet commenters (I had interacted with my fair share in my online publishing days and on Discord) were either excessively rosy and supportive, or were ready to tear you to shreds.
The Perils of TikTok Influence
The TikTok algorithm is different because you can become a celebrity overnight. On Instagram, the algorithm mostly relies on a tight friends social graph. It would require that many people who saw the initial post shared it in order for it to get meaningful additional reach. If you have 300 followers on Instagram, it's almost guaranteed that nothing that you post will go viral.
On TikTok, it's different. Your reach is evaluated on a per-video basis. Because the algorithm is showing videos to highly curated test groups to evaluate affinity for those first 10, 100, or 1000 people, it's unlikely that your video audience is your friends. TikTok is a platform where, with 300 followers, you can wake up with 3M views on a video. I know because it was happening to me.
This can be exciting or it can be scary. There are many stories of brands and overnight celebrities who find success this way, who are seeking it, and who are ready for it. But there are also many small businesses and individuals who are just not ready for that level of exposure: In the case of a restaurant business, for example, it can throw the demand and supply required to procure ingredients and anticipate inventory vs. sales way out of balance.
TikTok is also incredibly addictive. That's obvious as a user of TikTok. You feel your brain rewire. You start referencing it a lot, as the in-group culture takes over more and more mindshare. You start using TikTok as your primary search: Why search Google when you can get short video explanations immediately? You know that trends emerge from there first, and they cycle at a dizzying pace, so all of the other platforms feel sluggish and staid in comparison. There is even a subset of jokes on TikTok making fun of late-comers to trends as Instagram or YouTube-lovers.
TikTok culture is so particular and yet so dominant—a true insider platform that everyone can be a part of if they give their attention. It’s the reason why you see Top 50 music lists on Spotify full of songs you’ve never heard of, and encounter celebrities you’ve never seen before on the covers of tabloids.
There’s even a rumor that TikTok will reward early users with just one very high-performing post so that they feel the rush of virality and chase it like a white dragon for the remainder of their time on the platform, never quite reaching the peaks of that initial high. I’m not sure how true that is, but there’s some truth to the fact that TikTok feels uniquely intoxicating compared to other platforms; it slowly replaces Netflix and other screen time entirely.
The Most Important Tips I Learned
Here are the most important tips I learned while making daily videos, and starting to have several of my videos perform well:
Anything can become great content—but you’ll need video footage and a storyline.
A perfect video has a very specific structure: some sort of hook within the first 2-3 seconds, like a rhetorical question (“Is pay-for-what-you-drink wine better for the restaurant or the diner?”") or a structured thesis (“This is why you’re not growing as quickly as you want”), an explanation of why you’re investigating this or some background context, and the payoff toward the end.
The on-screen text is important because TikTok is increasingly a search engine; you want to make it easy for TikTok to catalog your video, so on-screen titles, captions, and subtitles are crucial, both for a consumer’s snap judgment of whether to stay on your video in their feed or whether to scroll past.
Use trending sounds when you can, but the best audio is your own voice with a trending song in the background. Use the TikTok library for songs.
If you’re going to jump on a trend, do it very early. Do it more for fun than hoping you get swept up in the algorithmic wave.
Content that performs well on TikTok is mostly: pure entertainment, informative / educational, or service-y (top 10, my 3 favorite, etc.) and the best accounts use a mix of all three on rotation.
Throwing a few hashtags #fyp #viral doesn’t work. Hashtags (no more than six) work to help with search and categorization. It’s better to be specific to the niche rather than target a general hashtag.
Be an earnest consumer of the platform if you’re hoping to master creating content for it. Let the algorithm find you content you can love and get familiar with the platform on which you’re posting. TikTok has its own endemic culture, and you have to speak the language of the platform as a native.
Test the new features and widgets. TikTok will feature accounts that use its latest features well. This applies to TikTok Shop at the moment or photo carousels a few months but could also apply to a certain feature or overlay.
If you want to grow quickly, find a niche—and fast. The niche could be a style of video, or a topic of conversation. Whatever topic first comes to mind for you, it could probably be narrowed even further. Posting videos about this same topic again and again and again can help the algorithm show your videos to the right people quickly and frequently, and can encourage them to convert because they know what to expect from you.
Use the engagement data that TikTok provides you. Comments are a great indicator of how successful your post was. TikTokers are active commenters and if your video made someone feel something, they’ll jump in the conversation. Likes aren’t enough, so if you aren’t chasing Comments, I’d suggest aiming for Shares. Shares are usually driven by: (1) That’s so me (2) That’s so you (3) I feel a very strong emotion (e.g., that’s hilarious, I hate that, this is so sad, etc.).
TikTok is like TV. It’s not necessarily a social experience. People are there to consume interesting or funny content by themselves. If the video creator is lucky, the consumer will share it with their inner circle.
There are typically two styles of videos without faces: quick-cut (which I did often—sing sound sync so that the image changes with the beat) and slower, one-shot videos. If you do quick-cut, you can snip together a lot of B-roll. If you’re doing a one-shot, make sure you have a long enough video file to sustain whatever your storyline is. Minimum five seconds.
If there's anything I know from interviewing people about influencer marketing at work, it's that TikTok can make anyone go viral—and can be incredibly powerful. But it's volatile and unpredictable. Your attempts might flop. They might soar. And unless you're willing to experiment around that, it's a hard platform to feel really invested in contributing to.
There’s no formula to a great TikTok video but there are common motifs—a certain hand motion when you showcase a new mascara, a way of getting dressed when you’re showing off a new fit, a way of perching your camera when you’re doing a fit-check, a certain order of operations if you’re doing a #GRWM. These help people know you’re speaking the language of the in-group; use them as needed.
Every video needs a storyline. Sometimes the story arc is the way your eye moves as a consumer from on-screen text to on-screen visual to the caption.
There are a lot of tools to help you make great TikTok videos: there are trend websites for the audio, for topics, and search; there are video editors (CapCut is very powerful); and then there are all of the built-in features on TikTok itself. There’s no limit to how professional your videos can be: scripted, perfect lighting, lav mics, recording studio, etc. but there’s no reliable relationship between production value and success on the platform. Lo-fi works well too.
Get over your aversion to appearing on camera. You don’t always need to be present, but having a human interaction helps ground a single video or an account. Showing your face and speaking to a camera is awkward at first, but also makes you more comfortable with the way you look, gesture, and articulate yourself. After recording a few videos like this, I was much less camera shy.
Script a video if you have to! It’s hard to speak off the top of your head, and if you have a tight script, it can make your life easier.
Look at the data. What was the view count on your video? Can you understand why it did or didn’t hit? Was your engagement / finish rate only 2%? Could you get it to 30%? TikTok gives you detailed insights into your aggregate performance and you should take advantage of it.
Posting every day is really a lot. Posting 3x a week is probably ideal for most people who want to foster a consistent presence, but there is no such thing as posting too much on TikTok. You don’t get punished for posting too much.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Why I Stopped, and What Happens Now
In early November, I went to a friend’s wedding in India. When I first landed, I took video footage of a cricket match I attended in Mumbai and of a fantastic home-cooked lunch at a friend’s apartment. When I was back at the hotel prepping the footage for upload later that night, I realized that my TikTok wouldn’t load.
TikTok is banned in India. I’d have to wait a few days to continue posting retroactively.
As is true of many habits, contributing a small amount every day keeps you on track. Small habits compound. Missing one day is no big deal. Two days and the habit is at risk. Six days and I almost forgot I had a daily habit to begin with.
By this point, I had been posting on TikTok every day for almost 10 months. I was also okay saying goodbye.
By the time I returned to Paris from India, I didn’t feel the urge to open the app. My brain had detoxed from posting and consuming there.
TikTok now feels like a distant language I learned one time—one I became fluent in, and was a meaningful part of my life last year.
While I still use my newfound skills for work (it’s especially helpful in hiring and understanding influencers on the platform, running ads, assessing social media marketing on the platform, deciphering market trends, and so on), I don’t plan on contributing very much to the platform in the near future.
TikTok is a really tough place to be a contributor and influencer. You can make it big really quickly, but influencers who reach Alix Earle status have to diversify quickly because the pay-per-view rate on TikTok is extremely low compared to YouTube, for example, even if you’re scoring a brand deal. Running campaigns on TikTok is stupidly cheap—using the TikTok Creator Marketplace, you can hire creators for $100-500 per video, and that’s for people with well over 50K followers. Follower counts on the platform are inflated compared to other social platforms, and effort devalued. TikTokers—like all influencers—burn out. And the faster an influencer can turn their “community” on TikTok into a product with a better effort-to-payoff ratio (e.g., Tubegirl as a fashion influencer; the launch of Djerf Avenue), the more likely they are to have an actual career.
I was nowhere near flying close to the sun like that, nor did I try to be. But I’m grateful to understand the ecosystem a bit better, and have made an opinion for myself based on first-hand experience. I never want to be the adult who doesn’t understand what the kids are into. Who ages out completely. While it’s not in my DNA to love TikTok the way it is for my teenage cousins, I do get it. But I’m happy to leave it behind.
What I’m proudest of is that I accomplished my 2023 resolution. I have no doubt that I can learn something quickly if I just start. Shortening the distance from having a thought and doing a thing is the ethos of TikTok.
It was a great place to experiment with new creative ideas. Many of which I’ll be expanding on in this newsletter and elsewhere in 2024.
So so insightful‚ and inspiring! I've been a Tiktok lurker for years now and you have totally inspired me to jump into creating. I relate so much to the cycle of judging thoughts and wanting to just get in there. I will return to this post when I jump in myself :) thanks elyssa!
I Lived It -- I was there during the tiktok viral cowboy boot moment