From 1,166 TikTok followers to 254,600 in 3 months, How?

I have to be honest here, I'm still shocked by the results, and that's precisely why I'm spilling the tea on the exact same strategy we used to go from 1,166 followers to 254.6k in three months.

A Dash Of Context 

Three months ago, I moved in temporarily with a good childhood friend while I waited for my immigration paperwork to be approved so I had some free time.

My friend happens to be a Tarot Reader @rolandogarcia.tarot (follow him to know your future in Spanish 🔮).

In one of our late-night conversations, I told him the same two things I wrote in my previous blog post (Bullet Proof Guide To Unleash Your SMB Growth On TikTok). 

1. TikTok can be lifechanging.

2. Going Viral on TikTok is easier than you think.

I've collaborated with +60 TikTok creators to produce content that achieved +74M video views before, but I've never designed a strategy for a content creator.

This was a new succulent challenge, I knew the principles for TikTok growth, but the practice can always be a different story.  

I asked my roommate, would you be interested in growing your TikTok account?

To my luck, he was on board and excited. 

The Strategy 

1. Research your niche

2. Brainstorm topics & schedule content

3. Shooting, editing & posting videos

4. Analyze results

5. Repeat

The Rules 

Rule #1 Commit to posting 3 videos a day. (Consistency & Learning)

Rule #2 Always like and answer comments from people as soon as you read them. (Engage with your community)

Rule #3 When in doubt, don't overthink and post the video! (Build Confidence)

1. Research Your Niche

Having a content niche is half the battle. If you don't have a clear niche, that should be your priority. Our niche was Tarot-Tok, we watched as many videos as we could, and we saved the ones that we liked and performed well to our favorites. 

Then, we analyzed the videos and asked ourselves questions:

• What are the most popular topics? 

• Who are the most popular TikTokers in the niche? And Why?

• What is the duration of the videos?

• What hooks do others use in the first 3 seconds?

• What background sound do they use?

• Autogenerated voice vs. personal voice? 

• Are they putting narrative text on the video?

We wanted to know as much as we could about what performs well and have educated assumptions about why. It took us a week or so to do this. 

2. Brainstorm topics & schedule content

Now, 3 videos a day means 21 videos a week, which can feel very daunting. To mitigate this, we did what most marketers call content pillars. 

Content pillars are simply put, just general topics about your videos; they gave us a framework to consistently produce the number of videos that we needed. 

Content Pillar / Description 

• Oracle of the day: Pull one card from an oracle deck and deliver a message.

• Interactive readings: 2 to 3 cards facing down with numbers, and the watcher has to pick one to receive a message.

• Express readings with popular topics: 3 card readings talking about popular topics (love, money, job,

• Freestyle: Interesting audios paired with readings, trends, replying to messages, etc.

3. Shooting, editing & posting videos

Shooting

We schedule one evening a week for shooting all the raw videos. Setting the stage and ample lighting can take a bit, so we wanted to make the most of our time. We usually recorded for 1 to 3 hours. 

Editing - An art & a science 

The art - Creating messages that resonated with people was all about my friend's already developed skills as a tarot reader—mysterious talents + his splashes of creativity. 

The science - have a strong hook in the first 3 seconds + keep it short, less than 15 seconds. Find more about the science here.

Posting videos 

Just post it; you don't know what will work, and the ONLY way of learning is by putting content/yourself out there. 

4. Analyze Results 

The experiment started on January 10th, 2022. We started posting the videos as per the schedule (a mix of the content pillars spread through the day). Our first video got 371 views, the next one was 1397, and the third one had 339 views. The average views of the first 13 videos were 1436. 

But then, video 14th blew up with 816,000 views (now it has 1.6M). My primary hypothesis for the success formula was: the hook + topic = Your person wants to tell you this message + most people have A person. 

To test the hypothesis, we did another video about the same topic. Slightly changing the hook and the message of the video was different. The second video got 191,700 views (now, 513k). 

5. Repeat

The topic resonated with the audience, so we kept that in mind for the next batch and kept brainstorming and experimenting with the topics + and adding new ones to discover more. And basically doing it all over again.

After the initial heavy lifting of finding a successful formula, I knew my work was done so I jumped off the boat.

My friend kept the consistent work. Going through the feedback loop over and over, the growth rate started accelerating, quite fast and now he’s is a respected Mexican Tarot-Toker.

And just like that, @rolandogarcia.tarot grew up to over 254.6kfollowers over three months and we couldn’t be happier. The experiment was a success and I couldn’t help to wonder if I could do it with something else?

Follow him to know your future in Spanish : @rolandogarcia.tarot 😉

I hope you liked the story.

Cheers! 
Kathia Marroquin.