TikTok Followers App: Is It an Effective Means to an End?

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Carolyn Howell

Last Updated: May 21, 2024

TikTok 101
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On social media, users often make quick judgments about creator and brand accounts based on how many followers they have. Users often equate follower count with an account’s degree of popularity. And it makes logical sense. The more followers you have, the more people know who you are on and off social media. From the creator or brand’s point of view, more followers often mean greater reach. On TikTok, greater reach means more views and higher engagement. Having more fans also attracts more new followers. It creates a positive feedback loop. Could TikTok followers apps deliver the same results?

A TikTok creator sits on a chair and makes a video for her followers.

Free TikTok Followers App: Do They Work?

You can buy followers or use a free TikTok followers app. These apps offer two benefits:

  1. They give you a chance to take a service for a test drive. Before paying to get followers, check to see how the app works with a free trial. Many such apps offer a trial offer for this purpose. 

  2. You can simulate natural follower growth with small and realistic numbers. Most free trials only offer a small number of free followers. This is a good thing because you don’t want to boost your follower count too quickly. A big increase in followers within a short period will trigger TikTok’s bot alarm. Your follower count may also look suspicious to real users. They’ll look at your follower numbers vis-a-vis how new/old your account is, how many videos you’ve published, and your view count.

Keep in mind that using a followers app will not give you real followers. You will only get numbers to give your follower count a boost. The boost can help you make a good first impression or make users curious about you. Especially if you’re still building your community, having a small number of followers is often an obstacle to sustaining growth. Would you bother learning more about a creator or brand if you see they only have a handful of followers? This is where a followers app may offer a solution to help you overcome said obstacle.

Friends record themselves for a TikTok dance video.

What’s the Best App To Get TikTok Followers for Free?

So, what’s the best app to get TikTok followers for free? Here are our top picks. Feel free to try each one so you can find out for yourself which service works best.

  • InstaFollowers. This service has been around for a long time — outlasting countless other social media growth services. You can claim 10 TikTok followers for free every 24 hours. They also offer free TikTok likes and free views. 
  • PubTok. The site is giving 25 free TikTok followers to the first 2,000 claimers daily. You don’t need to complete a survey or perform any other task to get the freebie. Just provide your username and email. 
  • Followers. You can get another 10 TikTok fans for free from FollowersUp. You only need to enter your email and TikTok profile URL to collect your free followers. 
  • GrowTok. Take advantage of GrowTok’s three-day free trial. Just select a package depending on how many TikTok accounts you want to send you traffic. Since it’s free for the first three days, you might as well select the Influencer or Pro package. Don’t forget to cancel your subscription when your three days are up.

Watch Out for Fake TikTok Followers App

Follower apps may promise to deliver “real followers.” Whether you’re buying them or claiming a free offer, you’ll get numbers or fake followers. There are legitimate services that deliver the numbers a customer orders. And then there are fake TikTok followers apps that don’t deliver at all or are just looking to get your account information. How do you spot them?

Watch out for these red flags:

  • The site immediately asks for your TikTok username. There’s no additional information about the service and how it works. 
  • The site asks you to log into your TikTok account. A legitimate site never asks for your password. 
  • The site looks exactly like another service going under a different name.

If you encounter any of the instances above, run away and never look back. Especially if a service is offering something too good to be true, don’t be tempted to take it. You’ll risk having your account information stolen or your account hacked. At the very least, you may get spammed by fake profiles with fake engagement.

These suspicious third-party apps are another reason you should first opt for a free trial. But even with free followers, views, and likes, choose your service cautiously.

A TikTok creator records himself while he performs a trick for his followers.

How To Make Sure a Followers App Is Safe

Knowing the red flags will help you steer clear of malicious sites. You should also take note of the following pointers to make sure a follower’s app is safe to use.

  • Look for the HTTPS or padlock icon in the site URL to make sure the site is secure. 
  • See if the site provides company contact information. A chat function for customer support, an email address for inquiries, or both should be available to customers. 
  • Read on-site customer reviews. But don’t solely rely on these. See if the site has reviews on trusted review platforms, like Trustpilot. 
  • Make sure the service has a money-back guarantee if you’re unsatisfied with it. 
  • The site should offer adequate information about how the service works. 
  • Check out their FAQs section. The site should be able to answer common customer concerns. 
  • Test out their customer support. Try chatting using their chat function, or send them an email to assess the quality and timeliness of their response.

If you’re planning on buying followers, here are additional tips:

  • Choose a service that offers gradual delivery. You can also select how to split your order to receive your followers in small batches. 
  • If there’s no option for gradual delivery, make multiple purchases of small follower quantities. Spread your purchase over several hours or days to get deliveries randomly. Doing it this way will make your follower growth look natural. 
  • Opt for “active” or “premium” followers as much as possible. These are followers whose profiles could easily pass cursory scrutiny. They have profile pictures and some history of TikTok activity on their page.

A woman chops vegetables on a kitchen counter while recording herself with her phone.

How To Get Followers on TikTok Without Downloading Apps

Knowing how to get followers on TikTok without downloading apps is a must for any creator or brand. Follower apps can only help you make a good first impression. You still need to attract real followers to grow your fan base. Only real users can give you real engagement and help you remain visible and relevant in your niche.

Make sure you master these three essential strategies for attracting real followers.

1. Know What Your Target Audience Wants

Your target audience holds the key to the door that will give you continuous follower traffic. You must know what they want to be able to reach them via their For You feeds and TikTok search.

Here are some tips to help you discover what types of content will get you the followers that are right for you:

  • Do a keyword or hashtag search on TikTok. Use keywords or hashtags that are relevant or popular in your niche. TikTok’s Creative Center is an excellent resource if you need help identifying relevant and trending keywords and hashtags. The video results your search delivers should give you a good idea of the types of material that will capture the attention of your target viewers. 
  • Check out the profiles of other creators/brands in your niche. Look at their most popular videos to get content inspiration and find out what resonates well with your shared audience. 
  • Make the TikTok For You algorithm work in your favor. Give it the right signals so that it delivers your videos to your intended audience.

2. Know How To Optimize Content for TikTok and Your Niche

Developing an effective TikTok SEO strategy is another surefire way to get your content in front of genuinely interested users. Optimizing content helps interested users discover your videos in two ways.

First, it gets your videos on their For You feeds. Content optimization is like drawing a map for TikTok’s recommendation algorithm to follow. You give the algorithm directions to deliver your content to the right feeds.

Second, optimization helps you rank high in TikTok searches. When a user intentionally searches for content like yours, it’s like fate giving you good odds of meeting your perfect audience match. You want to make sure the meeting takes place with proper optimization.

How do you optimize content?

  • Use sound that’s right for your material or that your audiences are listening to. 
  • Use TikTok effects and filters that work for your content and are popular among other creators in your niche. 
  • Use relevant keywords and the right combination of hashtags in your video description.

Get the Timing of Your Posts Right

Ensure your intended viewers see your content by posting videos when they’re on TikTok. Your TikTok analytics will help you identify the best times to post on TikTok to reach your audience. However, you’ll need weeks’ or months’ worth of posts to get accurate information on when they’re active on the platform.

What if you don’t have enough data from your analytics to help you create an optimized posting schedule? You can check out other creator/brand pages again. Find their most popular videos, take note of when they posted these videos, and find a pattern. Follow their posting schedule and see if it gives you your desired results.

Three creators show their phone screens displaying the word “TikTok.”

Grow Your TikTok Community With Real Followers

Gaining your first 100 TikTok followers is hard. How quickly you hit the 1,000-follower mark depends on how quickly you figure out a content strategy that works. Once you breach 10,000 followers, it gets easier to sustain follower growth.

You need to lay the foundation for sustained growth with real and genuinely interested fans. The growth formula on TikTok is simple. Know your audience and create content for them. TikTok’s For You algorithm will deliver your content to users most likely to be interested in it. When you have genuinely interested viewers, they will almost always become instant followers. And when you have genuinely interested followers, they will almost always deliver engagement.

Consistent engagement tells TikTok that your content is relevant to a certain type of audience. And the algorithm will continue delivering your videos to the same audiences. This is how you create a positive feedback loop that will take you from 100 followers to tens of thousands.

Using a TikTok followers app may give you the push to get people’s attention. Impressing users with numbers can only take you so far, however. You should be able to justify your numbers with quality and relevant content. Once you get the attention of real users, you want to ensure that they’ll become instant fans. And you can do this by giving them content they’ll enjoy or find value in.

You can also reach more users who are right for your content when you sign up with High Social. Reinforce TikTok’s algorithm with another AI-powered audience-targeting tool — High Social’s advanced, proprietary AI technology. Deliver your videos to the For You feeds of users who will likely hit your follow button and give you active engagement. Start growing your TikTok today!

TikTok 101