From Writers Helping Writers:
Almost every teenager in the United States knows about TikTok—the video-sharing social media platform with hundreds of millions of active users. And with the increasing popularity of the #BookTok hashtag, which readers use to talk about their favorite books, many YA authors are turning to TikTok to promote their work.
I began posting on the platform in August of 2020 and have since amassed nearly 225,000 followers (a number that is still growing by hundreds each day). TikTok makes it incredibly easy to go viral with minimal effort. Just one fifteen-second video can get you tens of thousands of followers; all you need is a decent strategy. Here are some tips that earned my videos millions of views:
1. Use Hashtags to Your Advantage
Many users believe that using popular hashtags (such as #fyp) will be enough for them to go viral. That isn’t entirely true. While there is a slight chance those hashtags will give you thousands of views, it is highly unlikely they will help you reach your target audience. Using hashtags such as #author, #writingabook, or anything relating to your genre will be much more effective. The first video I posted with those hashtags garnered nearly half a million views.
2. Post Consistently
If one of your videos does go viral and you disappear off the platform for the next few weeks, you’ll probably end up losing hundreds of followers. Your goal should be creating bonds with your fans so they’ll feel more inclined to buy your books, and one way to do that is posting at least once a day.
3. Don’t Just Promote
Believe me when I say this—nobody wants to hear you blatantly promote your book 24/7. A promotional post once in a while is fine, but your followers will get bored if everything on your page is just you talking about your book. Keep your content related to writing, but switch it up. One way to do that is by posting writing tips. Those are amazing choices for videos because they give you credibility. Not to mention, if you help someone with their writing, they’ll want to repay you in any way they can—like buying your book. Half of my followers wouldn’t be following me if it wasn’t for my writing tips.
4. Use Trending Sounds
This is probably the #1 factor that will help boost your videos. If you see that a sound has over ten thousand videos under it (most of which are recent), use it. You can even put it over a video of you talking (just lower the sound to zero if you don’t want it to be heard) and it will still boost your views.
Link to the rest at Writers Helping Writers
Maybe I’m showing my age but put a sound in your video, put that sound to zero so people won’t hear it and instead they’ll hear you speak and it’ll increase your views??? What does this mean?
If im understanding this people listen to videos just to hear some random sound, which sounds crazy. but then they don’t hear it because your jabbering and decide I was baited and switched gee lets buy their book!
makes no sense to me for being a promotion strategy at all. if someone is spending their time watching videos for ‘sounds’ odds are they aren’t filling their FreeTime reading books!!
I’m missing something here, too. I just put in “sounds” on YouTube search and the #1 (for Relevance) is: “Relaxing Zen Music with Water Sounds” (19,000,000 views). Yes, very relaxing. But… turn the volume down to zero? So Search can register zero sound???