What To Do Before You Start Posting on TikTok or Instagram
- Philip Romano
- 18 hours ago
- 7 min read
The first step in any creator’s journey is, of course, making some new socials.
It can feel so simple yet so complicated. A lot of creator’s struggle with just perfecting their profile picture or cleaning up their bio. Most creators who struggle with growth make the same mistake ultimately – they start posting without building that foundation that helps both the algorithm and audience recognize and understand their brand.
In 2026, social media platforms will rely heavily on content signals, topic consistency, and creator position to determine who to show your content to and where to push it. Before you post your first video, whether that’s to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or whatnot, there are several steps you have to take beforehand to max out your chances of reaching the right audience.
In this guide, we’ll cover those key steps and how you can get started with content creation as quickly and painlessly as possible.
What Should You Do Before Posting?
Develop your creator positioning
Before you post, you need to consider how the algorithm views new creators. Think of it like meeting a stranger for the first time: they have NO idea who you are or what you do. You have to teach them in a way that’s natural and not forced (or cringe).
To start, you’ve got to ask yourself: “What should people know you for?”
Do you want to be known as the fitness coach with up-to-date advice? Do you want to talk consistently about movies that sucked but you love? Many creators start posting random content to see what works, but all this does is confuse the algorithm and get you nowhere.
Don’t get us wrong – experimentation is extremely useful, but when calculated and planned, not by picking random ideas out of a hat or by replicating solely what’s trending.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram start to categorize accounts based on the topics and niches they consistently discuss. If your content jumps between unrelated themes, such as fitness, travel, gaming, or such, it becomes much more difficult for the platform to determine who you are and who they should show your content to.
Instead, define what you want your primary content lane to be.
“What topic can I talk about consistently?”
“What knowledge or experience do I bring to the table?”
“Who do I want watching my content?”
Some examples of clear positioning include:
Beginner fitness education
Budget-friendly vacation tips
Beauty and skincare routines
Strong positioning doesn’t mean limiting yourself forever. It simply means helping the algorithm define a clear starting signal for your personal brand. If you truly have multiple niches you want to partake in, consider starting a second profile and doing the same with that account – creating content in one clear lane.
Getting your profiles social-ready
After you’ve established who you are and who you want to attract, now we’ve got to clarify that directly to the algorithm. Your social media profiles act like a business card – they quickly identify who you are, what you do, what you look like, and how you function.
When new people discover one of your videos, your profile is going to be the first place they go to decide whether or not you’re follow-worthy.
Unfortunately, many aspiring creators leave this section incomplete or unclear. A great optimized profile will communicate three things off the bat:
Who you are
What content do you create
Why someone should follow you
The hard part is doing it in such a limited space. Your profile essentially consists of your profile’s name, username, bio, and the photo you use to advertise yourself. You need to ensure that all four of these core elements showcase yourself in the best light possible.
For your profile picture, it should be clear, recognizable, and consistent with what you want your brand to look like. For 99% of creators, a simple headshot with great lighting works best (especially if you’re going to appear on camera a lot). Make sure to use the same profile photo across every platform you’re active on.
The same goes for your username & name. You don’t want to be “user123” on TikTok and then “userofficialguy” on Instagram. It doesn’t make sense, and it makes it harder for people to follow you on multiple platforms. To choose a consistent username, use a username checker to see what’s available across every platform easily, and then change your usernames to meet that.
Finally, you’ll need to optimize your bio. The idea here is you want to clearly communicate to the algorithm about what you do, without coming off as spammy or inauthentic. It’s a hard balance, but one you can find with the right tricks!
Instead of making a vague statement like a quote or “just sharing my life”, try something more along the lines of “location, niche, motivation,” or centering your new bio around your goal.
Creating your brand look
Humans are visual learners. We judge people based on how they look, how they present themselves, and how they are in a creative light. It’s important to create a cohesive look and style for your videos that you can rely on and improve consistently.
A basic creator brand kit typically will include:
A color palette
Fonts you like to use
Your editing style
Visual tone
Some of this you won’t have out of the gate, a lot of it will change over time as you create more and more. Treat this less like a set of hard rules and more like a starting point to help you stay consistent while you try new things. Maintaining that consistency in your content is what’s going to make your content more identifiable to audiences, creating a pattern that’ll help convert more viewers into avid followers.
TL;DR: The goal isn’t to be complicated with your branding. The goal is to look intentional, stay consistent, and develop.
Define your primary strategy
The most common mistake we see newer creators make is trying to grow on every platform at once.
While it’s very important to eventually be present everywhere, trying to post everywhere from the beginning often leads creators to burnout.
What you should focus on instead is choosing one primary platform to focus on first. For most creators today, TikTok is still the king of getting discovered on social media due to it’s unique distribution model. We highly recommend you start there, and then expand to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts as secondary platforms.
If you can focus your energy on getting really good at one platform first, it will be significantly easier to expand your reach both creatively and sustainably. As well, you build momentum – something that can potentially carry the audience’s attention between platforms (if done right).
Plan your first set of posts
Before you start posting publicly, or before you post again, it’s going to be helpful to map out a bunch of initial content ideas.
What we’ve done in this guide thus far is build out who you will be on the Internet. Now it’s time to figure out what you want to say. You’re going to want to talk or act within a similar niche every time, as we said earlier in this guide.
For new or burnt-out creators, this can feel like being trapped in a box. But this isn’t the case. The box isn’t a limit, it’s a foundation. Our recommendation is to choose three core content pillars and stick with them. These pillars can be anything as long as it ties back reliably and consistently to your niche.
For example, a content creator focused on “social media growth” as a niche might use:
Creator tips
Platform updates
Content breakdowns
Each one of these is a unique content style or a unique series, but it ties back to that central idea of “social media growth”. By planning ahead, even just by 10 or 20 rough ideas you’d like to post, you can get farther ahead than creators who simply come up with ideas on the spot every single time, which will lead directly to burnout in most people.
Another thing you can do is build a content bank. This sounds complicated, but for most creators, this is simply a sketch pad where you can put ideas as they come to you.
Most people cannot force ideas to spawn out of thin air – they’ll typically come randomly throughout the day – sort of like a “eureka” moment. But if you don’t write that idea down in the moment, you’ll likely lose it by the time you’re ready to actually film it. Write it down! Build an Excel and put an idea in each box, or use the notes app on your phone (which is what I personally do).
By building a content bank, you’ll be able to save all of your ideas no matter your ability to currently film them, and you can refer back to the list when you’re struggling to film and have no idea what to make.
Set realistic expectations
The most critical step for any aspiring creator is adjusting expectations.
Let’s be honest here – you aren’t going viral overnight. Social media growth like that is extremely rare, and most viral videos come from accidents, not from intentional efforts to go viral. Going viral also doesn’t net you fans in the long-term – they only really like what you went viral for. By setting that expectation lower, we can focus on growing consistently and building an audience slowly, but one that sticks with you for life.
As well, many creators assume that if their first few videos don’t perform well, something is wrong. This isn’t the case – the algorithm is simply learning what you’re posting and figuring out who best to send it to.
Think of growing your audience like an exponential curve. The start is very low, and you’ll likely see very little growth, but you need to tough it out through the low engagement and keep on posting. It’s not about growth – it’s about refining.
Creators in this phase are going to learn:
What topics resonate with their audience
How to structure videos for engagement
How the platform distributes its content
How their audience responds
The creators who win aren’t the ones who win out of the gate. They’re the ones who post through the slump, choose to improve something every time, and grow.
How to really grow on social in 2026
Starting your creator journey is very exciting, and it’s something to be proud of!
However, success rarely comes from simply posting videos – you need to define your positioning, optimize your profile for discovery, and understand who you are and who you’re trying to target. By understanding these core elements, you’ll be giving yourself a much stronger foundation for growth.
The goal isn’t perfection – it’s clarity. Keep on posting until you hit the high road.
If you’d like support in building that foundation, our Influencer Incubation Program is perfect for diving deeper into your strategy and skills as a creator. Join for free here.
