Let me guess: a couple weeks (maybe even a few days) into quarantine, you downloaded TikTok and SWORE it was a dumb appyou were too old for, but just needed a bit of entertainment for a few weeks until this damn thing was over. And then a few weeks went by, and this damn thing didn’t end, and you got sucked deeper and deeper into TikTok addiction…it’s ok sis. You are me, I am you! This is a safe space!!
Now that we are here, what’s next? Chances are you have spent HOURS scrolling through videos, laughing your ass off, maybe even sharing some videos with friends on TikTok or on Instagram. It’s been fun and all, but now you’re thinking “damn if these teeny boppers can make all these videos, why can’t I??”. Except you don’t know where to start and every time you try to, you just get frustrated and give up.
Don’t despair! I am going to break it down into a user friendly guide. If that’s what you came for, then keep reading. PS: this guide will make the most sense if you have TikTok open on your phone while reading along!
How to navigate the app:
First things first: how the heck does this app even work?? There are four tabs on the bottom: Home, Discover, Inbox, and Me.
When you first open it, you will most likely start off on the “For You” part of the “Home” page. This is your “feed” or “timeline”, depending on which apps you use and which term you are more used to. It is specially curated for you based on an algorithm that takes your likes, shares and saved videos into account. The more people you follow and more activity you have on the app, the more specialized the algorithm becomes!
From there, you can click over to the “Following” tab at the top, which only shows people you have followed. Pretty self explanatory! You most likely will also see a lot of these videos on your For You Page (or FYP for short), especially if that’s where you first found them.
The “Discover” tab allows you to scroll through trending hashtags, which you can click on to view videos with that tag as well as save the hashtag (more on that later). This is also the tab where you can search for users, videos, hashtags, sounds and more.
The “Inbox” tab is a little misleading, as it contains both your inbox messages as well as notifications. I personally hate that they don’t keep it separated, but whatever. This is pretty self-explanatory as well!
The “Me” tab contains your profile pic, bio, follower/following/like count, social media links, as well as three tabs at the bottom. The first tab is where your posted videos go. You can scroll through and see the view count on each video (which is displayed as a gif), then if you click on the video, you can see your like, comment and share count (as well as watch the video, obviously 😅).
The second tab is your liked videos, where every single video you “like” is saved. If you are like me and spend A LOT of time on TikTok, I highly recommend saving videos you think are exceptionally funny/useful/creative and will want to reference later, as finding it in your liked videos tab is tedious and difficult!
The last tab, that looks like a padlock, is where all your private/archived videos go. I only have a couple there so I don’t have much else to say about that.
How to save videos, sounds and hashtags:
From your “me” page, locate the little bookmark icon (should be next to the “edit profile” button and the social media icons, if you have any other accounts linked). If you click on that, you can access your saved videos, hashtags, sounds and effects.
I discovered fairly early on that saving as many of these as you can is a MAJOR KEY! Think about it – most videos are 15 seconds or under, so you can watch a LOT in a few minutes. Most likely, your brain is exploding with ideas about videos to create, and two minutes after watching you’ve already forgotten what you were inspired by.
Honestly, don’t feel ashamed because you are NOT alone and I swear this app makes us all feel cracked out like that. The solution? Save EVERYTHING! I cannot tell you how difficult it is to find something later on when you are thinking about it. There will be certain sounds I wanna use, that I have heard 239847398478x, but as soon as I go to find a video with that sound to save it, I can’t find it anywhere! And forget searching for it – you won’t find it!
You probably have realized that certain songs will start trending on TikTok and go viral really quickly. Pay attention to that! Once you realize that these sounds work like memes and understand how those memes work, it makes a lot more sense to hop on that train and make a video with a trending sound than to use something super obscure and hipster. Unless you are into that. But if you want some more exposure, this is the way to go!
Certain hashtags are good to save as well – like ones that are really popular or really relevant to your content – so that you can go back and remember to use it in a video later on. Hashtags seem to work more straightforwardly on TikTok than Instagram. You WANT to use the ridiculously viral ones, not the niche ones. You only have so many characters in your caption, so make them count!
Something to note though: due to the nature of TikTok, trends come and go FAST, so you need to check the trending hashtags often to find the most popular ones for that day, and continue to save sounds according to trends as well. Better to save too much than not enough! You can always go back later and clean up, such as after you have used a sound already (which I do, because I don’t like repeating songs/sounds).
How to create videos:
By this point you should realize that the options for videos you can make are utterly ENDLESS! I am mindblown by people’s creativity on TikTok – and humbled by the fact that most of these video creators are a decade younger than me 😭
Anyway, I am not here to give you ideas on videos to make, just explain the technical part of HOW to make them, in as simple terms as possible. The basics, if you will. The first thing you need to know is that you have the option to film IN the app, or film and edit outside the app, upload to TikTok, and add more edits/effects if desired.
How to film in the app:
I almost never use this option because it gives me anxiety, but certain videos are easier to film in the app. For example, if I am making a video based on a trending sound/song, I will just click on the sound and select the “use this sound” option, then film. This option is really good if the video you are filming is based on the song lyrics or beat and you really want to get the timing perfect.
To film in the app, you click on the (+) tab in the bottom center of the app, which will bring you to the filming screen. From there, you can choose to film at normal speed, slow, super slow, fast or super fast. There are additional filters and effects you can add while filming as well (again, good idea to save ones you like so you don’t spend forever searching later when you are ready to film).
After you hit the red button to record, you’ll notice there is a bar at the top showing how much of the video time has been used up so far. This will vary based on whether you chose a 15 second max or 60 second max. You have the option to delete the last clip and reshoot as many times as you want, but once you shoot the next clip, you can’t go back to the one before it without erasing both. (PS you don’t have to use up the whole 15 or 60 seconds allotted – if you don’t use the max time, just press the red checkmark to go to the next page.)
Another pro-tip: use the self-timer option to select how much of the video you want to film in one go. For instance, if you want to film up to a certain part of a song, then stop and change outfit/location/set up, you can literally drag the self timer to that part of the song and then the next time you start the self timer it will automatically start there.
Once you use up the max amount of time, it will bring you to the next page to edit. At this point, you can still go back to the previous page and reshoot the last part or the whole video. You also have the option to “adjust clips”, which allows you to reshoot or reorder clips that you have already taken.
This is a useful option if you are filming a video where you are pretending to be two or more different “characters”, and need to change outfits or locations to “be” each person. In that case, you would film the whole video through with filler clips, then go back and reshoot with the correct outfit and placement.
Once all the filming is to your liking, there are tons of options for added voice effects, visual effects, transitions, filters, etc. We will go over this in a second. I suggest playing around with them and seeing what looks cool!
How to film outside and upload to the app:
I use this option for most of my videos, as I find it allows me the most control and reduces my anxiety about filming a clip wrong and not being able to go back to it and redo it (which I have done a million times). It’s also useful if the video you are filming takes multiple days to film (such as my braids transformation), and you don’t want to have the draft perpetually open in TikTok. I also think it gives you more freedom to film multiple takes or versions of a clip/video, then decide later which one fits best and edit accordingly.
I personally use InShot to edit videos, and sometimes play around with Unfold as well to create visually interesting backgrounds and layouts to photos and/or videos. You can upload both photos and videos to TikTok, so a combination of both will create a cool and unique video.
Once uploaded, you can trim the video, change the speed, reorder the clips, and add sounds. When I have a particular sound in mind that I want to time with the video, it often takes me FOREVER to repeatedly edit to the exact length and speed to fit the song. It is a pain in the ass but worth it!
Just as you can with videos filmed in the app, you have the option to add endless voice effects, visual effects, transitions and filters.
How to add effects:
Howww do you add effects you ask? Simply click on the “effects” icon at the bottom and scroll through the different options at the bottom. The “visual” and “effects” tabs are what we are referring to here.
For the “visual” tab, you select an effect by holding it down at the part of the video you want to apply it, and then releasing it where you want it to stop. I find this takes a few tries to get it right, but you have the option to see what it looks like before saving it. You can add as many of these as you want.
The “effects” tab works differently – first off, you can only choose one at a time per video. Second, instead of holding it down, you will select the effect then “trim” each end to the desired length and location you want to apply it to.
How to create transitions:
Transitions are also found under the “effects” tab, and are applied the same way as the “visual” effects are added, by pressing down and holding the desired transition for the part of the video you want to apply it to. It is fairly straight forward, and again requires a bit of trial and error to get it at the right part of the video.
How to add words/writing:
To add text to your video, click on the “text” tab at the bottom, write your word/phrase, then play around with different fonts and colors. You can change the alignment of the text (left, right, center), but unfortunately not the size. However, you can use two fingers to drag it out or in to make it bigger or smaller that way.
Once you hit enter, you can move the text around to the desired position, and you also have the option to adjust the duration of the text. For instance, if you want it to appear three seconds into the video, and last for two seconds, you would change the duration. Simply tap on the text, select “set duration”, then drag it to the part of the video you want it to appear.
This can get really tricky, especially if the text is supposed to go along with the audio, as you cannot hear the audio while doing this. As everything else, it can be a bit tedious to get right but worth it in the end!
How to increase exposure and views:
As I mentioned before, the best way to ensure you get a lot of exposure and views on your videos are to use trending sounds and hashtags. Using trending sounds will help you hijack the algorithm so more people see your video, and adding trending hashtags will boost it even more.
The key here is honestly just to use whatever is popular, even if it has NOTHING to do with your video. For instance, if the trending hashtag at the moment is #ButterGlossPop, but your video is about DIY shoelaces, just use it anyway. It literally does not matter, no one cares, and everyone is doing that to get more exposure.
Same goes with sounds: let’s say you have a video about your favorite way to make chicken, but the Savage remix is trending. Use that sound for the video anyway! You can even do a voiceover over the sound, but still get the benefits of using the trending sound.
The most clever way I have seen this used by influencers is to make a video with the trending sound and whatever dance is being used for it by all the other TikTokers, but then add text related to the topic of the video. For example, my girl Oyin has been making tons of dope videos with useful blogger tips and tricks, where she is just looking cute and doing a dance and then letting the text speak for her. She gained tens of thousands of TikTok followers in just a few weeks doing this!
Still have questions?
I tried to cover as much as possible in this blog post, but I am aware there is a LOOOOT I didn’t touch on and couldn’t possibly touch on in one blog post! If you have any specific questions, feel free to leave a comment below! I hope you learned something new today 😊
