Here’s the scenario: You signed up for a TikTok account wanting to get in on the fun of creating and sharing short videos. You jumped in on some trendy video challenges, made a few lip-sync videos, created a few very interesting videos, and steadily grew your follower base.
You also found out that hashtags are great and more and more TikTok users are now finding your videos. You also have a knack for putting the appropriate music to your original videos and then all of a sudden, one (or two) of your videos went viral and is now being shared by others at an unprecedented phase.
For most people on TikTok, one of the most gratifying things that can happen is for your to have a viral TikTok video. Although being “viral” is not strictly pegged at a certain number of views or likes, it means your videos are now being shared many times.
You start becoming curious, and you wonder how to replicate your viral video. Although you have a general idea, you want to know more about “metrics” or measures that will give you insights into how your videos become viral.
For the sheer thrill and challenge, you want to create another viral video and you will need all the necessary tools at your disposal to replicate your success.
Enter analytics: With analytics tools, you can now get your hands on information such as followers, profile likes, the number of videos posted, engagement rates, etc.
In this piece, we will look at how you can analyze your performance on TikTok and highlight the importance of analytics.
Steps to take
There are a few simple steps to allow you to view or access TikTok analytics tools to help you monitor your videos.
Here are the steps:
Upgrade to a “Pro” account.
First, you need to switch your regular account to a TikTok Pro account. You can go to your profile page and go to the “Manage My Account” section, and from there click or tap on “Switch to Business Account.” The other steps involve an email of mobile phone verification, and that’s it.
A quick note here is that TikTok will only start “recording” videos or posts from the moment you have switched to the “Pro” or “Business” account. Unfortunately, this means you can’t track analytics for your previous activities from your regular account. Upload and after seven days, you are now ready to view your analytics.
View and measure.
You can now track and look at metrics including follower count, likes, comments, and shares, among others. The in-app TikTok analytics can also provide you weekly and monthly growth, total video playtime, and more importantly, it can also provide you with information on who is watching your videos.
Use your mobile phone.
You can now use your mobile phone to access the “Analytics page” by tapping on the three horizontal lines in the upper right-hand corner of your TikTok page and going to the “Creator tools.” You can then view the “Analytics” section and tap to gain access to the data Tap to gain access to your analytics and stats.
On your desktop.
Move or hover your cursor over your profile on TikTok and select the “View Analytics” option. Once there, you will have access to four types of data including account overview, content insights, follower insights, and live overview.
Analyze your videos
One very good example of analytics that you can see is the Overview analytics. This analytics allows you to see video and profile views, and follower count for the last week, up to the last 28 days.
This is a nifty tool if you want to see how many times your videos were viewed in the given time frame and the total number of followers for the same time frame. In a way, it gives you an insight into traffic growth. For example, if your viral video was uploaded on a specific day, say Saturday, you can see on the analytics the sudden spike in traffic for that specific video post on that specific day.
That one nugget of information can already tell you that your viral video has healthy engagement and that you are more likely to continue getting the engagement if you upload a similar video.
By the same token, your videos getting less engagement may signal that you need to look for other creative ideas for your next videos. Keep in mind, however, that this is not set in stone.
TikTok, as we mentioned many times, is a short-form video platform, and as such, your analytics will give information on the videos you posted. There are actually two distinct video analytics that you can use: the “Video Views” and “Trending Videos” sections.
Video Views will give you insights into the most recent video you posted (over the last seven days) while Trending Videos will give you insights for videos posted more than seven days ago. Both sections offer content insights such as the number of shares, average time spent watching the video, and its traffic source type, among others.
So what if you want to know more about who your viewers are, in terms of demographics and gender? TikTok Analytics has a “Followers” tab allowing you to see how many followers you gained or lost over the last seven days week. The “Gender” on the other hand gives you information on, well, the gender of your followers. The “Territories” tab gives information on your followers’ countries.
A quick note here: You need to have at least 100 followers to be able to activate the “Follower” tab. A “Follower Activity” tab gives you information on your followers’ activity by the hour or by the day, which is pretty useful, so you can now “time” your future posts.
TikTok Analytics is just one of the analytics tools that you can use for your TikTok page. There are other tools out there, some of which are free while some require you to pay a subscription. The paid analytics tools provide more details, as expected, and are very useful particularly if you want to “monetize” or place a business component on your TikTok page.
Having analytics tools for your TikTok page is very important, should you wish to gain insights into valuable content metrics. Either for fun or business, these metrics can surely help you improve your videos in terms of engagement and getting more followers.
