How To Increase Engagement on TikTok: Top 5 Tips

If you’re looking to build a loyal and engaged online community, there’s no better place than TikTok! TikTok’s captivating For You feed (FYF or For You page/FYP) gives you the best odds of getting views for your content. And when you’re raking in the views, it’s easier to drive engagement! Here’s your ultimate guide on how to increase engagement on TikTok. 

What Is a Good Engagement Rate on TikTok?

According to social media marketing company Rival IQ, TikTok’s median engagement rate per follower is 2.6%. In terms of engagement rate (ER) by view, the median engagement rate is 3.4%

Use the following formula to calculate engagement rate (ER) based on followers:

ER = [(Total number of likes, videos, and shares) / (Total number of followers)] x 100

The formula for engagement rate by view is as follows:

ER = [(Total number of likes, videos, and shares) / Total number of views)] x 100 

Your ER signifies your content’s relevance to your audiences. It also lets you know if you’re reaching the right audience for your content. The higher your ER, the more effective your targeting and content strategies.

It’s also worth noting that the average views-to-like ratio is 10:1, or ten views per one like. This means you should be converting ten percent of your views into likes to achieve good engagement rates.

A Socialinsider report reveals that a 3.5 percent average ER is a solid start for pages with fewer than 5K followers. As your follower base grows, you should expect your average engagement rates to increase, as well. Profiles with 5K-10K followers typically have more than 4% ER; 10K-50K followers should get you more than 5% ER. 

Take note that you can also find your ER via your Analytics. These are all good benchmarks to keep in mind when you’re fine-tuning your strategy to boost your TikTok engagement rate. 

How To Increase Your Engagement on TikTok: 5 Tips to Boost Your ER

Keep in mind that it’s one thing to drive engagement for a single post. Sustaining consistent and high engagement for all your videos is another story. But it usually takes only one video to deliver a “Eureka!” moment. And these five tips can help you get there. 

1. Satisfy Audience Interests

From viral challenges to trending dance routines and popular search topics, you must keep current with your audiences’ latest interests. Whatever your niche and specialty, be ready to explore and take advantage of related categories to keep your community engaged. 

Trends that go viral often have universal appeal, i.e., they’re not niche-exclusive. TikTok trends offer an excellent opportunity to reach a broader audience — throwing your door wide open for more followers and engagement! Hopping on one also helps you stay relevant and visible in your community. 

One of the best ways to discover what’s trending is via other creators in your industry. Check out the pages of content creators with a bigger follower base than you and see if they’re hopping on a trend. Or visit TikTok Creative Center for the latest trend reports and hottest videos. Find content inspiration from others who are already killing it on the platform. 

Another valuable resource you should explore is Creator Search Insights. Find out what topics the people in your niche are currently searching for. Identify content gaps and create videos on topics that are not delivering a lot of results to stay ahead of the pack.

2. Capture Audience Interests Within the First Three Seconds

Having your videos show up on the feeds of suitable viewers is easy. The tricky part is capturing their attention and making them pause their thumb-scrolling. 

Viewers often make a split-second decision to keep scrolling or stop and watch based on the video’s intro. You need to hook your audience within the first few seconds of your video. Once your video passes through their feed, this is all the time you have to pique their interest.

If you succeed in making viewers stop and watch, you’re one step closer to getting their engagement! How do you catch their attention? Try asking an intriguing question via a text overlay at the beginning of your video. Or tease them with quick before and after shots! 

3. Actively Interact With Your Viewers

You need to give engagement to get more engagement. This means acknowledging the likes, comments, and shares you receive. You may simply like comments and then add a comment to thank everyone for their feedback or support. But it would be even better if you’ll take the time to respond to viewers’ comments!

Posting individual replies not only keeps your comments section busy. It’s a more personal way of expressing appreciation for your viewers’ time and interest. An active comments section lets the algorithm know that lots of users find your post relevant. And it will find more viewers who may also be interested in your content. This magnifies your post’s potential to generate even more engagement. 

Your commenters will also be delighted to receive a reply from you! And if you respond immediately, you may be able to catch your commenters’ attention while they’re still active on TikTok. This could lead to more back and forth, which is a simple strategy to achieve a high level of engagement. 

4. Optimize Your Posts for Greater Accessibility

If you want consistently high engagement, make sure your posts are accessible to all types of viewers. Fortunately, TikTok offers various tools to help you optimize your videos for greater accessibility. Here are some of them:

• Text overlay to provide the proper context for your video. 
• Voiceover so viewers can still understand and enjoy your content if they cannot watch. 
• Captions for those who can’t watch with the sound on or for hard-of-hearing viewers. 

Add these simple features when editing your video to deliver more engagement. Make it easy for different types of viewers to appreciate your content. 

5. Make the For You Recommendation Algorithm Work in Your Favor

TikTok’s For You feed gives creators the targeting advantage to capture engaged viewers. The feed’s recommendation algorithm is quite effective in identifying users most likely to be interested in your content! This means you won’t only enjoy the guarantee of views every time you publish content. You can rest assured that you’ll get interested viewers! 

Knowing what your target audience wants is just part of the equation. It’s just as important that you make sure your content actually shows up on their feeds. 

The algorithm already does a pretty good job of matching potentially interested viewers with a creator’s content. But you can help make its For You feed recommendations more accurate by giving it the right signals. Here are some quick tips:

• Make the most of the video description to help the algorithm understand what your content is about. Be as concise as possible when describing your video. Use keywords most relevant to your content and your audience’s interests. Longer descriptions will also boost your post’s searchability.
• Figure out the best combination of hashtags for both niche and wide targeting. Always combine category-specific hashtags and generic/popular but still related hashtags. Use three to five hashtags per post, and make sure your tags are relevant to your content.
• Tag a location when it’s appropriate and necessary. The algorithm also considers a user’s location/country when recommending content. Tagging a specific location will help TikTok find your intended viewers more quickly. 

Engaging Post Ideas for TikTok

Are you looking for engaging post ideas for TikTok? Try the following to drive higher viewership, engagement, and your TikTok SEO score:

• How-to videos. This type of content always draws engaged viewers. Give it a try — whether or not your specialty is a good fit for tutorials! You can create a how-to just to share your favorite recipe!
• Branded hashtag challenges. These are perfect for generating user-generated content (UGC), building brand/product awareness, and boosting audience engagement.
• Behind-the-scenes or a-day-in-the-life content. Viewers are always eager to have a peek at what’s behind the curtain or a creator’s raw and candid moments.
• Content that’s perfect for Duets or Stitches. Create an original choreography featuring a popular or original song. Or recreate a memorable movie/TV scene. Then, encourage your viewers to reproduce your content via a Duet or Stitch. 
• Q&A videos. Ask your followers to submit questions and pick three or five that you’ll answer in your next video! This will give you guaranteed viewership and engagement! 

Is It Easy To Increase Engagement on TikTok?

Any marketing specialist would know that the secret to guaranteeing engagement is reaching interested audiences. This is just as true on all social media platforms. When you find people already interested in your type of content, you have the best chance of capturing their attention and engagement! 

Focus on creating quality content for your target audience and use the right optimization tricks. With the right signals, the algorithm will more accurately identify the most suitable viewers for your posts. 

It sounds easy enough, right? But your work is not over. TikTok ensures your content finds its way to the right feeds. You must ensure you can convert the video views into follows, likes, comments, and shares. You need to give TikTok valuable content to deliver. 

Is your content relevant to your target audience’s current interests? Are you taking advantage of TikTok’s innovative editing tools and features to engage your audience? Are you optimizing your posts for accurate audience targeting? These are just some of the questions you should address if you want to know how to increase engagement on TikTok.

Did you know you can double your audience-targeting capability when you sign up for a High Social plan? High Social’s advanced, proprietary AI targeting technology works as effectively as TikTok’s algorithm. Connect with more viewers who will likely engage with you and become lifelong fans. 

Start growing your TikTok today!

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