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I recently wrote a post about how to grow on TikTok in 2023. It’s a great all-in-one resource of strategies you can adopt to grow and sustain a following on TikTok.

But what about strategies you need to let go of?

Even though TikTok is the newest platform people are using to launch their Influencer career, it’s still been up for quite some time.

Enough time to know what works and what doesn’t work.

Since we just covered what works, I’ll use this post to inform you about what doesn’t work and why you might not be seeing the growth on TikTok you want.

Let’s go over the common mistakes that I see Creators make on TikTok.

Trying to Go Viral Every Time You Post

I admit, I am absolutely guilty of this. Especially when I’m in that mindset of needing to grow, constantly thinking, “I need to grow. I need this video to go viral. I need to grow!”

That shouldn’t be the thought process. What we need to think is,

“How can I show up for my audience today?”

80% of your energy should go toward providing value to your audience.

What do I mean by value?

I define value in four different ways:

1. Educational
2. Entertaining
3. Relatable
4. Inspirational 

If you can create content that’s educational, entertaining, relatable or inspirational, then you’re doing good.

The remaining 20% of your energy can go toward being creative, thinking outside of the box and attempting to go viral. It can be a unique idea or something outside of your normal content with trending audios and topics. That’s fine.

But stop trying to go viral every time you post. Focus on the value.

And remember, what’s valuable to you may look different from what’s valuable to your target audience. Cater to what they find value in.

Stop Deleting Posts

TikTok doesn’t want to push Creators that are constantly creating and deleting, creating and deleting.

Why would any platform want to feature Creators that constantly delete their creations?

I’m not sure if this is true for TikTok, but I know for Instagram, when you completely delete posts, you delete all the data associated with that post and the data it was feeding Instagram.

Slowly, but surely, your videos will get less and less reach because you’re slowly, but surely, giving taking data away from the algorithm that’s trying to know you.

Again, this is true for Instagram and I can’t say for certain this is true for TikTok.

But it makes total sense. How will a platform get to know you and your target audience if you keep deleting your content?

And why would you go through the effort to create and schedule your TikTok content to only delete it later?

If you don’t like your older videos, just let them be. Let them live.

All my old, cringly videos on YouTube are still up. They have nothing to do with the content I make today, but they’re up.

Not Studying Your Posts

I recommend doing this monthly.

Go back and study your posts. Study the analytics. Look at what videos performed well and which ones didn’t.

Whether you prefer TikTok’s platform to study analytics or a third-party platform like Metricool doesn’t matter. Just study them.

Ask yourself questions as you study that data. How could you make improvements on underperforming posts? How can you recreate success without making redundant content?

A great mindset to have as you study your content is not to think, “What succeeded and what failed?”

It’s better to think,

“What did my audience enjoy and how can I improve my content to cater to what my audience values?”

What do I mean?

For underperforming posts, you don’t necessarily have to completely stop making content like that. Maybe that approach to that concept needs to be shifted. Maybe the hook at the beginning didn’t capture attention, resulting in people scrolling away too quickly.

Be analytics and have a mindset of learning and growing, not trashing and recycling.

Using Irrelevant Hashtags

Let’s not use #FYP. Let’s not do that anymore.

We want to stay relevant to the video. That helps TikTok categorize your content and push it out to the right people.

That’s as far as I’ll dive into this one since I went over why relevant hashtags are so important in my previous post. So there you go.

Not Replying to Comments

Try to reply to every single comment!

Every. Single. Comment.

Why?

It shows you’re building a real community and you care about the people that are following you. That’s what TikTok and social media are all about. Creating connections.

When people see that, they’ll be more inclined to follow you since they’ll see that you’re someone they can connect with.

Aside from the human aspect, you’re also telling TikTok’s algorithm your video has high engagement. That will, in turn, help your video perform better.

But don’t just reply. Reply with a video when you can!

I love replying with a video to the comments people make on my TikTok videos. When someone asks a question in the comment section, reply with a video. Make it a series.

When someone sees that video and sees a video in the comments, they’ll watch that. Then they’ll see another video in the comments and watch it. And so on and so on.

If one of those videos goes viral, it can create a chain reaction for all those videos.

It’s a really unique and beneficial strategy you can’t do anywhere else. Take advantage of that!

Obviously, not every response can be a video, but when you can, do it. When you can’t, a simple text response will do. Just reply to the comments!

Find the TikTok Strategy That Works for You

I know there are hundreds of thousands of TikTok tips, tricks and strategies out there. I’m not claiming it’s my way or the highway.

The strategies I went over in this post and my last TikTok post are simply what has worked for me and what has worked for my students.

These are simply strategies I’ve noticed don’t work for my students or me anymore. It’s up to you what to implement. You can figure out what works best for you, your goals, your niche and your audience.

When you figure that out, let me know in the comments on this post! I’d love to see what works for you and see if that’s a strategy that can help everyone!

Follow your joy!