After being an avid consumer of TikTok content for a few years, last December I started feeling the impulse to experiment with creating my own TikToks. I started making a handful here and there, and by January I felt ready to ramp things up. I challenged myself to post three times a day on TikTok for three months.

Many TikTokkers were claiming that posting three times a day would help you grow quickly–some even advocated for five times a day! I knew five wouldn’t be realistic for me, but thought I could manage three, so I dove in. I started on January 23rd and finished the experiment on April 23rd. I had about 140 followers when I started, and thrillingly, had 1,533 by the end. 580 of those followers I gained in the very last week of the experiment! Here’s what I learned along the way.

Evening posting times worked best (for me), but posting times aren’t everything.

After some experimenting, I decided to stick to the same three posting times throughout the experiment. It made it easier for me to remember when to post. I picked 10am, 3pm, and 8pm. I had researched optimal TikTok posting times, and found that morning (before 10am) and evening tended to work best. That was pretty consistent with what I found in my experiment! I’d post at 8pm and often wake up to lots of TikTok notifications from a video that took off overnight. My 10am videos did pretty well too, and the 3pm ones often flopped (relatively speaking).

This was useful to know, because if you’re sharing three videos a day, they’re not all going to be spectacular. My 10am and 8pm videos would often be more thoughtful or labor intensive, and the 3pm video would be something quick and easy, like a dog video with a cute audio.

Filming content in batches is helpful.

The drafts folder is your friend! It was effective for me to sit down a few days a week, when I had the energy and momentum for it, and film eight or ten TikToks in one go. I’d move around my house, sitting by the back door with a plant behind me, on the dining room floor in front of a pretty credenza my husband made, at my desk, or on the bed in my office. By changing up the backdrop, it’s less obvious that everything’s been filmed on the same day. At first, I changed my shirt every couple of videos I recorded, but quickly realized that it didn’t matter and no one cared.

After filming this content, I’d add closed captions and audio, write my caption, add hashtags, add a title, and save it to drafts. Then I’d create a reminder in my phone “post video about X at 10am on Friday.” This workflow was much more efficient for me than filming three separate times per day and posting them in real time.

It’s hard to predict what will go viral.

I wish I could say I discovered some magical secret to TikTok success. Unexpected videos took off like wildfire, and I was blown away. My most popular video ended up being a quick 12 second clip of an old Barbie house from the 60s. I probably spent no more than three minutes filming it and recording a voiceover, and somehow it reached over 105,000 views. Hundreds of women who had the same Barbie house commented “I had that!” and sent it to their friends, causing it to gain far more traction than I anticipated.

**Trending audios aren’t quite as crucial as some claim.**

You may have heard that trending audios are the key to succeeding on TikTok. Using the right audio at the right moment is supposed to help your account reach new heights.

I found that trending audios weren’t as vital as people said. My most popular videos did not use a trending audio. The Barbie house video was just a voiceover of me talking, and many of my other videos that did well were simply me talking to the camera with boring background music. Picking the perfect audio isn’t essential for TikTok success–though it can help.

Vulnerable content resonates and helps you find your niche.

As I grew more comfortable on camera and started finding community, I began feeling more open to sharing my own stories instead of just hopping on the latest audio trend. I filmed videos between 60 seconds and three minutes talking about mental health topics and was amazed to see how much they resonated! One video took off to the point where it gained 29,000 views. Someone from the comments section even went on my Poshmark to buy something from me because they wanted to support me!

Vulnerability + trending audio was a winning combo.

While trending audios won’t make or break you, I found that combining a trending audio with a vulnerable moment that others could relate to was a great combination! It’s especially effective if your twist on the audio is unusual or unexpected.

Yes, people are willing to listen to you talk for three whole minutes–if you do it well.

Three minutes seems like a long time to just sit there and talk to the camera! But people will listen to you, especially if it’s a topic they care about. I found that putting a title or topic on the top of the video shows people what it will be about and compels them to stay.

I always try to be concise and articulate in my videos. As a viewer, I was always bothered by videos where the speaker is just rambling or purposely avoiding getting to the point just to make you watch for longer–it’s a surefire way to make people scroll away.

There is some kind of ‘delayed release’ component to the algorithm.

I’d heard rumors that there was a ‘delayed release’ aspect to TikTok’s algorithm and I did notice this to be true with my own content. With many of my videos, they would only start to take off days after I posted them. The Barbie house video I mentioned got 400 views in the first two or three days…then at the five day mark, jumped from 2,200 to 13,000 in an hour, and hit 74,000 by the time I went to bed. 24 hours later, it hit 105,000 views.

A video I made about a children’s book called Making a Baby got about 200 views in the first day, 1,000 views within two days, and then a full week later, suddenly hit 8,000 views in one evening. I’m not sure what it takes for it to tick over that threshold into abruptly blowing up, but it does happen! If you’re self-conscious about a video getting low views, just leave it. Don’t delete it. It may just need time to marinate and find the right audience.

Encouraging people to comment (and responding to them!) is essential.

At the end of most of my videos sharing a personal story about mental health, I usually say something like “Have you experienced something similar? Leave a comment below!” People are eager to share their stories and feel heard by someone who gets it. I was proud and excited to have started creating a community where people genuinely feel heard and supported by awesome humans in the comments section.

Shares are important and can help boost your stats.

One thing that helped my most popular videos reach lots of people was shares. TikTok allows you to easily share a video, whether through a DM within the app, texting it to a friend, or sharing it in Instagram Stories. Whichever someone does TikTok loves it and boosts you in the algorithm for getting more shares. You don’t need to explicitly say “send this video to a friend,” just let it happen organically. One sneaky thing you can do? Copy your own link. That’s it. TikTok counts that in the number of shares, so it’s a small way to boost your own video!

Show up and keep trying.

Lastly, TikTok is still a relatively new platform and there’s no one formula for success. You just have to show up and keep trying. I’ve seen some folks theorize that TikTok rewards you for hitting certain milestones–50 videos uploaded, 100 videos uploaded, 10,000 likes, etc. There’s no way to know if that’s true, but in my experience, the more you grow, the more you grow. In the last few weeks, my account started growing faster and faster.

Despite not having a specific niche, the TikTok algorithm kept serving my eclectic mix of content to the exact folks who wanted to see it. I’m excited to see where it goes from here! I’ll likely reduce my posting frequency to twice a day and will report back on how that affects things.

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