How to Grow Your First 1,000 Followers on TikTok

TL;DR

1. Pick one niche to focus on

2. Post consistently with strong hooks

3. Engage with others in your niche

4. Utilize TikTok SEO, but don’t rely

5. Pick metrics and keep using those to improve

Are you looking to get your TikTok creator career kicked off? Need to hit that 1K follower mark ASAP?

It’s a common belief that the first 1,000 followers will be your hardest to obtain – and this can be true for most creators. When starting out, most people will jump straight off the deep end into content creation with no skills, no preparation, and no platform knowledge. This makes things harder in the long run, as the people you’re looking to attract into your profile aren’t interested in you yet.

Think of every video like a pitch – you want your first impression to be as good as possible so that they’re inclined to bite. In this guide, we’ll walk you through exactly why the 1,000-follower milestone is important, and how you can reach it ASAP.

Why the First 1,000 Matter Most

Hitting your first 1,000 followers is a badge of honor most do not have, and what many consider to be the first “major milestone” of any TikTok influencer’s career. It shows that you have momentum, unlocks various tools within TikTok’s platform, and means you’re doing something right. It ultimately gives you credibility as a TikToker and can even encourage other people to follow you more than if you solely had 50 followers.

Some of TikTok’s key features for creator growth unlock only once you’ve hit 1,000 followers. These include access to TikTok LIVE, some monetization features, adding a link in your bio, and access to TikTok Shop for Affiliates.

How to Get 1,000 Followers on TikTok

Every creator’s journey is going to be different. While there’s no clear-cut route that’s one-size-fits-all, there are certainly proven methods you can utilize to fast-track your road to success.

1. Pick a Clear Starter Niche

Starting TikTok as a creator can be very exciting, and you can have so many video ideas on so many different topics! That’s great, keep note of all of them – but the true skill that will set you apart is knowing when and even if to film them.

If you were to make content on 10+ different topics with differing niches, the TikTok algorithm will frankly have zero clue where to place you. When the algorithm doesn’t know where to place your content, it doesn’t get placed – meaning audiences won’t even know it’s there.

To avoid your videos not getting pushed to the FYP, try to focus your entire profile on just 1-2 core topics. This can be anything from k-beauty to electronic music; any niche is a great niche as long as it has a thriving community attached to it. Ideally, you’ll want to select one that has a large enough community that will be open to your content, but not so large that you’ll be drowned out.

By selecting one or two communities to really focus on, you’ll be able to analyze, rinse, and repeat content with more frequent and valuable feedback than if you were to spread your eggs into too many baskets.

2. Optimize your Profile for Max Reach

Aside from the videos themselves, your profile is the best indicator of who you are or who you want to be as a creator. It shows the audience what you look like, where else you create content, and most importantly, what you make as content. Realistically, it can be anything you want it to be – but there is a way of being strategic with it.

TikTok’s algorithm rewards creators who are clear about what it is they create, as it becomes easier for the algorithm to categorize you as a creator. Your profile allows you to literally spell out who you want to be, directly to the algorithm itself.

For example, here’s how our Advanced Creative Media TikTok bio looks right now:

You can see we clearly communicate our brand’s name, what we do, who we create for, and who would be interested in our services.

Here’s what we believe you should include in your profile:

• Your creator name (how you want to be searched and known as)

• A memorable username (something catchy, easy to search, potentially including a reference to your niche)

• A clean, bright profile picture (although this can vary widely based on what your content is centered around)

• Keywords relevant to your niche (ours are Social Media, Content, and E-Commerce)

• Any widespread post styles that you publish or focus on (day in the life, vlog, etc.).

For inspiration on any of these, we highly recommend benchmarking at least two or three other creators within your community niche. This allows you to get a sense of what works within the community and will allow you to appear more appealing to new audiences.

3. Master 3 Video Types That Work For You

This point will require quite a bit of trial and error, so it’s important to remember that a video flopping is not always a sign of failure – it’s a sign of growth.

To succeed quickly on TikTok, you’re going to need to be good at a particular video style that works for you. What does this mean exactly? As TikTok grew rapidly since the pandemic, the platform has had many different eras of video style, and now it’s kind of settled into a few known “hit maker” video styles. Creators looking to get huge fast need to excel in one of them, use it to inspire their own style, or dare to pioneer their own from the ground up.

Some of these known video styles revolve around the following:

• Trendy 8-10 second joke videos

• POV (point of view)

• How to _____ in 30 seconds

• Green screen explainer videos

• “Man on the street” interviews

• Podcast episode-style videos

• Day in my life/fit of the day

Just like you did for your profile, we highly recommend benchmarking other creators within your niche to get a baseline on what performs well within your target niche. From there, you can figure out some video styles to try out or try to improve upon them and make them your own. Make sure to keep track of what works well and what doesn’t, and refine from there!

4. Master the First 3 Seconds (Hooks)

Arguably, the second most important thing when it comes to making engaging, high-conversion content is the first few seconds, also known as the hook. It’s so important that, in fact, we have an entire guide dedicated to purely making the best hooks possible – you can read that here.

To put it shortly, an effective hook is comprised of one core question: what stops you from scrolling on TikTok? Is it a flashy visual, a question that gets you thinking, something that interrupts your pattern?

It’s all of the above. A great hook will somehow catch you off guard, touch an emotional trigger, or spark curiosity in the viewer. This is an easy skill to start learning, but insanely difficult to master. It’s to the point that many TikTokers have made their own careers simply from teaching other creators how to master hooks themselves.

The best way to get started with creating effective hooks that I’ve found personally is by asking a question or asking for an opinion that’s relevant to your niche. For example, if your niche was k-beauty, then you could start your video with something like “Is it even possible to do your makeup for under $30 anymore?” or “How many empties do you still have? Be honest”.

5. Post Consistently 3-5 Times a Week

TikTok is known to reward a few different key behaviors, but one of the most overlooked is post consistency. The platform constantly evaluates how consistently you post and at what frequency you post, and uses this information to determine how reliable you are as a creator. Simply put: the more reliable you are as a TikToker, the more likely the platform is to push you further.

To achieve this a bit more easily, we highly recommend making a small content planner, so you know exactly when and what you’re going to post. This will help you figure out how to shoot videos when you’re short on time, give you ideas for when you don’t have any, and most importantly, keep you accountable and timely.

A content schedule can even just be a simple table, like this:

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
	Day in the life vlog		Get ready with me		Outfit of the day styling vlog

What is important is not necessarily the system itself, but rather making sure the system works well for you. If you choose to download a content calendar from some company, it might not be the right fit for 1 person vs. something designed for 30 people to use simultaneously. Think hard about exactly how you like to take notes, what would keep you running at 100%, and work from there.

6. Learn as Much as Possible

We’ve touched on a lot of different aspects of TikTok and content creation throughout this guide. A lot of it is fantastic advice, but at the end of the day, the thing that’s gonna ultimately set you apart from the rest of your competition is how much you’re willing to learn.

The best of the best creators, the quick accelerators don’t just sit around and post TikToks when they feel like it – they are cold, calculated, and understand exactly what it takes to go viral and build a community from the ground up. They understand that they won’t learn everything from a quick article; it’s gonna take a lot of YouTube tutorials, detailed guides, and experimentation to get to where they want to go. We highly recommend checking out more of our guides on content here.

Final Takeaways

Getting your first 1,000 followers on TikTok isn’t about going viral overnight. It’s not about luck; it’s about consistent content, smart strategy, and farming genuine engagement out of a community. By using the knowledge in this guide to your advantage, you’ll be able to excel faster and further than a significant chunk of your competition.

If we’re being honest, the creators who reach 1K quickly (and keep growing) aren’t always the most talented or most aesthetic – they’re the ones who keep showing up, trying new things, and learning what works well for them and their audience. Treat these first thousand followers as your foundation, your first milestone, your early community, and the goal for which you should keep testing. Want even more support to hit that first 1K? Apply for our Influencer Incubation Program here.