How To Get a Lot of Followers on TikTok: Preparing for 2024

Profile photo ofCarolyn Howell, author

Carolyn Howell

Last Updated: May 21, 2024

TikTok Growth
Want More Real TikTok Followers?

TikTok has become one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 1 billion active users. These users establish connections, jump on trends, engage in challenges, and lip-syncing battles. While the app is all about fun, some content creators and business owners use the opportunity to introduce their products. TikTokers do all these to grow their audience. The primary focus is how to get a lot of followers on TikTok.

Not having sufficient followers despite the large population of TikTok is a shame. If you’re in this situation, you’ll feel empty. You might even start thinking that your efforts don’t count. However, don’t beat yourself up, as that may not be the situation. Rather, it may be that you don’t know the attractive actions to take.

An illustration of connected follower profiles on TikTok

How to Get a Lot of Followers on TikTok Fast: Rapid Growth Measures

Many wonder how to get a lot of followers on TikTok fast because they feel they’re way behind. But, you must remember not to compare yourself with anyone because everyone has star moments. But to see fast results, note that it’ll require effort, dedication, and consistency. If you’re ready to work to implement the necessary follower growth strategies, read on to learn what to do.

An image of a person drawing arrows pointing to the word “AUDIENCE.”

Discover Your Target Audience

Some people may not know who a target audience is. But if you want to grow your followers, this has to be your starting point. The term target audience refers to consumers most likely to need and purchase your product or services. Knowing your target audience stands regardless of whether you’re a business owner or a content creator.

You can categorize your target audience based on age, gender, location, and job, amongst other considerations. For example, let’s say you own a shoe brand. You have to sit back and critically analyze the nature of your products. What kind of shoes do you sell? If you sell male corporate shoes, your target audience should be men who work in official environments. So your advertisement should target them. They’re the followers you need.

Here’s another example: assume you make skits, share jokes, and create memes. What’s the focus of your content? If your jokes are about relationships, your target audience should be adults. Depending on the nature of your content, you can also target rich and influential people or the middle class.

You may wonder how target audiences relate to growing followers on TikTok. Your target audiences need whatever you offer, so they are your potential followers. Thus, your content should aim to reach them. These people are strongly interested in your TikTok niche, so they’ll love to hear your opinions on industry-specific topics.

Their budding passion for your niche or service endears them to you, making it easy to become your followers. It wouldn’t be easy convincing someone interested in football to follow a baker on TikTok. But a foodie would gladly follow you with glee to learn and recreate your recipes. Finding your target audience is the first step for follower growth.

A picture of a cell phone beside a plant on a table showing a TikToker’s profile with their videos.

Consistently Create Content for Your Target Audience

Aside from discovering your target audience, devote time to analyzing them. Find out what they like and hate. Discovering what they like can guide you when creating content and give you ideas on what will resonate with them. If you can hit specific ideas and thoughts your audience shares, converting them to followers will be seamless.

After knowing what your audience likes and providing it severally, you might become too relaxed when the results start coming in. But this is the worst mistake you can make. Once you get more followers, don’t grow extremely confident in your abilities because pride goes before a fall. Also, you shouldn’t deviate. Rather, stick to your niche, keep applying pressure, and do what you do best.

Consistency is key to attaining sustainable follower growth. When people follow you, they expect you to keep dishing out that premium content that interests them. You need to post frequently. You can post twice a day to spark interaction on your videos. However, don’t put pressure on yourself to hit a specific frequency. Otherwise, the quality of your content may drop, causing you to lose followers.

It wouldn’t be good for your TikTok follower count to fluctuate. So be sure to keep feeding your audience with excellent content that they enjoy because relatability equals acceptance. Furthermore, acceptance is a virtue of love, which translates into followers. So, if you aspire to have more followers, post engaging content often.

Post at the Hours of Peak Activity

It’s important to post when your followers are available and online. This way, they can see and share your content as it drops. When they do, it will appear on the following feeds of their followers. You’ll enjoy this publicity as it will expand your reach, linking you with potential followers.

Posting at any time is risky as it may reduce your chances of going viral on TikTok. Therefore, research the best times to post on TikTok. However, if you’re using a professional account, this will be easier for you.

You only need to use your TikTok analytics to check follower activity. After checking the time and days your audience is most active, you can use a scheduler to meet those times. Hence, your reach will be higher.

Collaborate With Creators and Influencers

Influencers are gradually taking over TikTok and other social media networks. While at it, they’re influencing people’s perspectives and options. Influencers work brilliantly, and you can take advantage of this by collaboration. However, I must warn you that some influencers are pricey, so stay within your means. You can partner with micro-influencers or nano-influencers, depending on your budget. 

Also, find the right influencer whose image is in sync with your brand, or there will be a clash. Influencers and content creators can help you market your skills or products in a natural way that endears the audience. You can collaborate with them to make videos; they’ll post and tag you, and vice versa.

Naturally, their followers will also want to follow your profile if they find the video humorous, educational, or relatable. Whatever content you make with creators or influencers, ensure it’s within your niche so you’ll attract the right audience. With this, you can get up to 100 new followers in one day.

Cross Promote Your Content

TikTok is relatively new in comparison to other mega social media channels. If you already have devoted followers on other social networks, you should inform them of your TikTok presence. Interestingly, cross-promoting your content across social media channels is the best way to spread the word.

There are several ways to cross-promote your content. One path that most people take is repurposing their TikTok videos and sharing them on other platforms as short-form content. However, you can create text-based content for other channels and wrap it up with a link to your TikTok video. The video you link to your post should relate to your writing.

For example, if you write about visiting a gallery on Twitter, insert a link to your video of the place. Interested followers from Twitter, now known as X, can view your content. It’s easy for them to check out your page from there. If they like what they see, they’ll click the follow button.

An illustration of someone’s finger clicking the TikTok follow button.

Is Follower Growth Worth the Hassle? Benefits of Growing Your TikTok Followers

To some people, follower growth is all about increasing the numbers. They don’t realize that besides having good-looking figures, followers can turn your story around. What do you want to achieve? Is it to go viral on TikTok, promote your business, sell your products and skills, or entertain people? Whatever your answer may be, followers are important for achieving your aspirations.

The Source of Visibility

If you’re publishing content, it means you want people to watch and engage. Interestingly, followers can help with that. The natural question to ask is how? The answer is pretty simple. If you look at the interface of the TikTok app, you’ll discover two sections of feeds.

The most talked about section is the TikTok For You Page. However, people underestimate the power of TikTok’s following feed. The following page consists of videos and posts from those you follow. The implication is that TikTok will always showcase your videos to your followers on their following feeds.

That’s quite great and exciting. You don’t have to put in much work on the following feed for publicity. However, the quantity of your followers determines the number of following feeds your content will appear on.

So far as your followers toggle over to their following feed, your videos will be in the spotlight. After watching and finding your content interesting, they may share it, so by this voluntary act, your reach increases.

As they share your videos on their timeline, their friends and followers with similar interests will see your post. From there, they can decide to interact with your content and follow your page. So it’s like your followers are bait to get more followers. Just like the saying, you need money to make money.

Aside from the prospect of getting more followers, appearing on many following feeds opens you up to opportunities. You may have a talent but lack opportunities to showcase it because no one knows about your skill. But the visibility of being on screen might be your chance to close big deals with brands and influencers. Also, as a content creator, it might be your path to the perfect influencer marketing gig.

Getting Ahead of TikTok’s Algorithm

The TikTok 2023 algorithm determines what you see on the For You Page. However, the following page plays by a different set of rules. Appearing on the following timeline is much easier to nail. But getting on the For You Page is every TikToker’s dream. That’s because it’s the stepping stone to going viral and becoming an internet sensation.

But no matter how difficult it is to land TikTok’s FYP, followers are assets that can get you there. That’s because, though the algorithm curates the FYP uniquely for each user, followers can influence its selection. To understand this, you must know the tenets that TikTok’s algorithm looks out for. They include relevance, recency, engagement, interest, and user interaction.

The algorithm can’t evaluate and assess all these factors by itself, so it relies on the user’s interpretations. For example, the algorithm deduces relevance from the amount of engagement that a post gets. And the followers are the individuals behind TikTok engagement, making them indispensable.

Your posts also have greater chances of succeeding when fresh out of the oven. Imagine jumping on a trending TikTok challenge after the craze has died down. That wouldn’t make much impact because you came on board late. Hence, it’s important to post at the right time. That’s because your followers and potential audience will be there to engage and cheer you on.

The algorithm also observes user interaction. So, people will see videos similar to those they like, share, comment on, favorite, and more. Therefore, your followers are your arsenal against the algorithm. They’ll make you noticed and bring you to the limelight on the app. If you want to make a name for yourself, growing your followers can help you club to the top.

An image of a customer paying for her purchase.

Converting Your Target Audience to Loyal Customers

If you have a professional TikTok account, you should understand the worth of your followers and strive to increase them. There are various reasons why, but to sum them up, your business will remain stagnant without followers.

Although traditional marketing is still effective, the tables are turning to favor digital advertising on social media platforms. Out of the numerous existing social channels, TikTok is where brands targeting Gen Z and millennials thrive. On TikTok, you can use creative and catchy short-form videos to advertise your products and services in a few minutes. 

This strategy often yields success because the same way you find customers is how individuals search for products to use. Thus, this platform is the perfect meeting ground where it’s easy to convert viewers to loyal patrons. But they don’t jump from one end of the line to another; there’s a process.

When your target audience views your content and learns about your brand, they get excited. With subsequent encounters, their engagement grows, and they begin following your page. Then, when they’re certain they can trust you, they begin placing orders, boosting sales. To build trust, consider making testimonials and reviewing videos occasionally.

From followers, they graduate to fans and patrons who may help you publicize your craft with TikTok user-generated content. You can see how easy it is to break boundaries and win your followers over as customers. When they begin patronizing you, provide premium service that will lead to their retainment.

A picture of a phone showing TikTok’s official account on the app with over 46 million followers.

How To Get a Lot of Followers on TikTok Free: 4 Easy Tips To Implement

Some of the strategies mentioned above require spending. For example, consistent content creation and remaking trends require money for setup and shooting. Researching your target audience and their active hours may also dent your pocket. These expenses don’t sit well with those who want to test the waters. Below are a few strategies on how to get a lot of followers on TikTok free.

Always Add Relevant Hashtags

If you doubt the power of TikTok hashtags, you may have used them wrongly in the past. It’s good practice to use multiple hashtags, but overusing them will hinder your follower growth. Excessive hashtags often appear spammy. Another wrong practice in this regard is using many trending hashtags that do not relate to your content.

While it’s good to emulate trends, you should do it appropriately in a relatable way. So, if the hashtag is irrelevant to your post, don’t use it. Each hashtag appeals to a particular niche and audience, so regardless of its popularity, skip it if it’s unsuitable.

You can find relevant hashtags from TikTok’s suggestions or using free hashtag generators. If you use the hashtags that trend in your industry while they’re still relevant, it heightens your visibility.

The possibility of your target audience viewing your video increases as you become easily findable. Once people carry out a hashtag search, your video may appear in the lineup if its engagement is high. Thus, this breaches that gap between you and your potential followers.

High Social’s screenshot of TikTok’s commercial music library.

Use TikTok’s Commercial Music Library

A popular theory for getting followers is creating content that grabs viewers’ attention within the first three seconds. If they find the start of your video interesting, they’ll watch it to the end. Keeping your content short also helps with the watch time. But besides that, one major way of getting TikTokers to pause and watch your video is using the right music.

If you use a professional TikTok account, you’ll find the commercial music library helpful for finding songs. But even if you don’t, TikTok’s sound recommendations are always spot on. Songs work magic because they help you tap into a TikTok musician‘s audience. Some people may follow you just because of the sound you use.

High Social’s screenshot of user-generated content on TikTok.

Repost User Generated Content

Assuming you get creative and develop a hashtag challenge or trend that goes viral, you can gain followers from this. People engaging with your challenge or trend will result in exposure to more active users who can become your followers. When others partake in your viral content, whatever it may be, it’s your responsibility to share it.

Though reposting isn’t compulsory, it’ll help you post consistently and attract followers of recreators. It will also draw attention to the fact that you’re the original creator of the viral trend or challenge. But while reposting, remember to acknowledge the maker of the video. It’ll surprise you how much people partake in trends and the bandwagon of followers you’ll get from TikTok UGC.

Use Different Types of Content

Repeating the same thing induces boredom, so why not spice it up and infuse some variety to appease your audience? TikTok is mainly a visual platform with limited text. However, a language barrier may exist if you have a global audience. Luckily, you can breach this by incorporating captions into your videos.

Closed captions are a great way to contextualize your video. With this, even those scrolling through TikTok with muted volumes can enjoy your content. Aside from this, you can also take advantage of TikTok live sessions to familiarize yourself with your audience. Mostly, random viewers join live sessions and can become your followers from there.

Additionally, you can create TikTok stories to showcase background activities like behind-the-scenes moments. Stories last 24 hours, so it’s a great way to spice things up and experiment with your audience.

Implementing all these will upscale your follower game. However, you mustn’t start with all at once. You can select some strategies to start with and gradually include the others. But there’s something you must note when learning how to get a lot of followers on TikTok. Targeting the right people as followers is extremely important, as they’ll always support you.

Supportive followers cheer you on, interact with all your high-quality content, and share your videos. But to get them, you’ll need the help of an advanced targeting agency like High Social. High Social helps users find the right audience and establish genuine connections that’ll last a lifetime. So, start growing your TikTok today.

TikTok Growth