Intro
Below, you’ll see a sample of my worksheet. I keep it simple and let excel do the work for me. I’m not a social media guru like Zoe, but before I started writing full time 25 years ago, I was a CPA. Cough. I know, every writer’s dream. Mostly, I analyzed the marketing campaigns of smaller non-profit orgs to see how they were doing. So looking at numbers and then explaining them to good-hearted number-phobic directors was my specialty.
Goal
What I’m aiming for is engagement, because I can’t control what decisions Tiktok makes in terms of rolling out my videos. However, I want to learn to connect more so that I gain followers and people are happy to interact with me.
Result
After a couple of weeks of videos, what I’m seeing is that length isn’t a determiner of success. I’m not an actor, so that’s out for me, though I really admire accounts where people are funny or act out parts. I’m real, though, and the videos that seem to do best are ones where I’m just talking about my experiences as a writer and my personal responses to books. So far, I suck at writing or marketing tips. I haven’t learned to put them in a succinct way. (Hats off to Zoe.) I also suck at reading aloud or reading aloud just isn’t that engaging on Tiktok. Just being real here!
Coming next
I did an A/B test today. I posted 2 videos with basically the same content in 2 formats, one short with sound (under 7 secs) and the other about a minute, talking, no sound. I’ll let you know how it works out.
What else can you find out?
If you click on the bottom right of your video, where it says more data, you get more info on each video. For some reason the data is different on my phone and iPad! On my iPad I get a comparison to other creators “like me” (does Tiktok know?). I’m not sure how useful that is, yet, but the common theme there is I seem to be pretty good at generating interaction in comments and followers, but the likes are more uneven. I’m just learning what’s working, and that is a reflection of that.
What may be the most interesting info though is where viewers of a particular video are coming from. Someone mentioned wanting more people from the UK or outside the UK (sorry I forget). This is where you can compare videos and see how it varies. It does not conform to followers! I have more Americans than anybody as followers, but TikTok is pushing my videos out to Canadians (half), where I’m located.
Friends
Even though Tiktok is starting to focus on Friends, the vast majority of videos are still being seen on the FYP. I don’t know if that’ll change in the future, but I have an eye on that and how it might affect who’s seeing videos.
Worksheet
Here’s a screenshot of a small section of my worksheet. If you want the template, let me know in the comments below, and I’ll see if I can upload it somewhere for you.
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