The Fashionable Affair: 2018

I never expected to go viral, especially on a brand new app with only a 15-second video, but crazier things have happened. I really couldn't believe it when the views went from 250 to 2000 before my eyes, in a matter of seconds. In less than 24 hours the video had over 700,000 views, 100,000 likes and over 1000 comments, all while gaining me tons and tons of followers. I'll break this whole "going viral" thing down for you, so that you can too, go viral on Tik Tok.

Here is the Tik Tok video that went viral.

Link to the video on Tik Tok

(you can watch without having an account)

Here is the quick synopsis of the video: I did my moms makeup while she was about to go on her first fancy date since getting divorced. It's fun, it's quick and gives a quick glimpse of how I did her makeup. The end shows her all dressed up. Yep, all that in 15 seconds. Set to the song, Mom. Watch for yourself.

So how did this all happen?

First, I headed over to the App Store and downloaded Tik Tok, without knowing literally anything about it besides it's a new video app (this app was originally Musically and then changed to Tik Tok), that's it. I created an account, tried to get the hang of it and then started posting videos of doing my makeup and other trendy videos/challenges that I had seen on the "for you" page. I was excited to make a video with my mom because she loves when I do her makeup and we were excited for her date. I then posted that video, and then I just couldn't keep up. My notifications were insane; thousands of views, likes, comments, and follows all within 24 hours.

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The one on the left is after posting the video for about 10 minutes. At the time I had 210 fans (followers) and about 3000 views.

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The one on the right is today. I have ovre 6400 fans and over 774k views on the video. That's about a 24500% in 24 hours.

My Tips for Going Viral on Tik Tok

(based on my own personal experience)

#1 Post Quality Content Every Single Day

Spend time recording videos within your nitch every day. Occasionally, add in some trending or challenge videos for the possibility to be noticed more. For me, my niche is makeup/beauty so I tried to post one of those videos every day. Within a week one of those went viral.

#2 Pick Your Music With Purpose

You can use 15 seconds of virtually any music you can think of. Although you may want to use your favorite song (for me that would be Party In the USA), instead try to think about what song would work best with your content. For this video, I instantly knew that the song Mom, by Meghan Trainor would be perfect, not only do I love this song, the lyrics, and the meaning, but it makes others feel good too. To me, that seems like the perfect combination.

#3 Use hashtags

Hashtags have a lot of pull on Tik Tok partly because you can't include too many in a single caption which gives each individual hashtag more weight. Usually, people use between 3 and 5 hashtags. Make the meaningful and right to the point, no need for filler hashtags such as "like for like." For this video, I used #mom #momgoals #mymom #makeup which all fit perfectly with what my video was about.

#4 Caption Caption Caption

This might be the most important part of the whole video. The caption is the first thing (along with a cover photo of your video) that someone will notice while scrolling through thousands of videos so make it count. Make you caption engaging such as (comment your favorite pair of shoes), drive curiosity (omg I almost burnt myself on that curling wand), or give a descriptor caption (doing makeup on my mom). For this video I went with: "Mom's first fancy date out since her divorce, give her some love." This was mostly a descriptor caption with a little bit of a call to action.

#5 Tell a story

I promise you that the reason my video went viral is not because of my amazing makeup skills (haha I wish) but rather, people were fascinated with my mom's story, how she was getting ready for her first fancy date out since she got divorced and how her daughter was helping her. I got hundreds of comments that ranged from "hope you date goes well", "what a sweet mother/daughter duo", "get it girl," and "we need an update on the date!" They were almost all curious about my mom's date and also who doesn't love a feel good story? Storytelling is one of the best ways to engage your audience and get people to stick around.

I hope this helps you also go viral on Tik Tok! Feel free to leave your Tik Tok handle in the comments and I'll give your video a like!

Follow me on Tik Tok: @sincerely_maddy

See Ya on Tik Tok,

Maddy