My Experience Going Viral on TikTok

Post Outline

This week, I wanted to share an experience I had going viral on TikTok. The app TikTok has blown up since the beginning of the pandemic. People post everything from cleaning hacks, to wellness advice, to funny skits. We all know that social media has its positives and negatives, and I had an experience with this particular app that shaped how I think about TikTok and my online business. Social media, TikTok included, can be great for sales and reaching your desired audiences, helping to shape your brand! But, it’s important to be aware of the negatives that can go along with it, and how we can best handle it.

My Experience Going Viral on TikTok

A little back story to me going viral on TikTok: I downloaded the app and was posting here and there. It wasn’t something I was taking seriously, just a way to step out of my comfort zone and find a new way to promote myself.

 One night, I decided to record the sex reveal of my baby. Adam (my husband) and I already knew the sex, but we wanted to gather some close friends and reveal it in a fun way. We had access to an app where you can change one of the needles’ colors in the NYC skyline, and we were able to do this by donating to one of the construction companies. We lit up the needle blue, surprising our friends that our baby would be a boy. I thought it would just be a fun video to post, and I didn’t take it too seriously. 

Eight hours later, I woke up to not only 80k views, but more engagement without much strategy, and 200 new followers! 

Going viral on TikTok seemed like an easy, fun way to promote my business, and engage with people! There wasn’t a lot of strategy I used, I just got really lucky with the algorithm. 

Managing The Dark Side of Going Viral on TikTok

Of course, with every positive aspect of a social media app, comes about three more negatives. 

While I did wake up to a viral video- it ended up getting over a million views!- I also woke up to terribly vicious comments.

The two kinds of comments that stuck out to me the most were those commenting on how we were flashing how rich we were, and those saying how unexcited we looked about the sex of out baby. 

The comments regarding us changing the color of the skyline didn’t get to me as much because we had done it through donation, and anyone can do it by downloading the app! But, those talking about my reaction were a bit hurtful, because it involves my baby. People were placing assumptions about a situation they were not even present for, and judging me and my husband’s character. 

It was a quick awakening for me how quickly going viral on TikTok can turn into something so negative. 

It was pretty obvious by looking at the pages of the accounts judging me that they weren’t on social media for any other purpose than to spread their own negativity. A lot of them didn’t have profile pictures, any followers, and they weren’t active on their own pages. The internet is the best place for bullies, because there’s no consequence, especially with anonymity. 

Getting unsolicited opinions from people is hard to deal with. While I do get positive comments supporting me and congratulating me on my baby, I had to learn to handle the negative comments when going viral on TikTok. The people who are taking that time to publicly judge you aren’t people you should be taking advice from in the first place. We have to let it roll off of our shoulders, because we wouldn’t want to listen to those people in real life anyways. 

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Tips to Going Viral on TikTok

I believe that going viral on TikTok did have benefits for my business and my brand. However, I don’t think it’s going to be a huge business booster for me. While I don’t think it’s a necessity, it can be useful if you’re interested in adding it to your business and promoting yourself. I have gotten a lot of engagement and more followers from this video. Here’s a few tips to keep in mind: 

Average Watch Duration Matters

My sex reveal was the perfect video for the alghorithm, and why I went viral on TikTok. An average TikTok is about 15-30 seconds. If a video isn’t interesting enough for the person watching, they may only see two seconds and swipe up. TikTok clocks that, and it effects that video popping up on peoples’ pages. My video was a countdown and there was a surprise at the end, so people wanted to wait that 10 seconds until the end of the video, and because it had so many comments they wanted to interact there as well, which caused them to go back and watch it again. This is a good example of how to get someone to watch a video all the way until the end. 

Use Engagement to Your Advantage

Engaging with the audience that watches your videos is very helpful if you want to go viral on TikTok. It shows TikTok that the video was interesting if people are liking it and commenting on it. They want to keep you on the app, and they want to keep engaging videos on peoples’ pages. I chose to engage with comments on my video, not because I was necessarily affected by what they were saying, but because it gave me the opportunity to engage and get my video out there more! It was a bit of an experiment, and it showed that if you’re viral on TikTok, engaging will get you even further. 

Let it be Natural 

People like interacting with real people. They don’t want to see someone post something just for the sake of it. Followers for the sake of followers is a vanity number. They’re not always going to be the right followers for your business. If a brand is wanting to work with you and you have 100k followers, but you don’t have a lot of engagement on your posts, they might not be able to trust that you have an audience connected to you that would be willing to buy their product. You want to have a relationship and trust with your followers. Going viral on TikTok doesn’t equal genuine connection with customers. 

Final Thoughts on Going Viral on TikTok 

I think that TikTok has its place in the online business world. It can help you reach more customers, which would increase your sales. But, going viral on TikTok does not mean it will reach the audience beneficial for you or your business. And, it comes with a lot of negativity that can make it harder to reach your audience. Being viral on TikTok isn’t going to be worth it if it adds more negativity to your feed. And remember, if you get some hate comments, don’t forget you’ve got a community here that will lift you up! 

If you’re interested in going viral on TikTok, and you want to reach more people through your social media, take a look at our Signature Sales Program, where we go in depth making sure you have a good connection with your online followers. 

If you’d like to keep up with me on TikTok, click here!

My experience going viral on TikTok and how it can help you with sales.