How To Get More Followers On TikTok: Your Two Options

It’s natural to dream of having a huge fan base when you sign up for a TikTok account. You may even imagine becoming an influencer on the social media platform, with a large number of followers eagerly awaiting your next TikTok video content drop.

Don’t get your hopes up.

There are more than two billion TikTok users, and they upload more than 33 million videos every day — that’s 272 new TikTok videos every second. The likelihood of having your latest post seen by a large number of random viewers is slim, and that’s an understatement.

You’ll never build a large TikTok follower base unless lots of users get to see your engaging content, enjoy it, and decide to hit the “follow” button to see what else you produce. And simply uploading terrific, original content isn’t enough to earn you new followers; the battle for eyeballs is much too intense.

You have to be proactive if your goal is to build a large and powerful follower count. That means finding large numbers of people who get to see your videos for the first time and have their first opportunity to follow you.

There are two ways to go about it.

1. Spending weeks, months, or years of your time finding potential followers manually. There are many methods of generating a wider audience for your content, but manual approaches bring in only a few viewers here and a few more there. That can be frustrating and it’s usually unsuccessful if you’re trying to quickly become popular and influential on the app.
2. Purchasing followers who will jumpstart your TikTok growth. Some people who learn about this strategy worry about the cost of the interactions or the safety of their account, but buying fans is a fast, safe, effective, and surprisingly inexpensive way to build an impressive TikTok presence.

It should be clear which option is the better choice for most users, but we’ll be examining both growth strategies in more detail throughout this article. We’ll also provide numerous tips that will help you convert the maximum number of new viewers into followers, no matter how you choose to build your audience.

Let’s get started.

Option 1: Buying TikTok Followers

We’re leading off with this strategy because it’s the fastest path to powerful follower growth.

Many people don’t understand the rationale behind purchasing followers. That’s not surprising, because it isn’t an intuitive approach. Instead, it’s based on the way that TikTok works.

The enormous glut of content uploaded to the platform requires a system to allocate visibility for posts; there are too many to show all of them equally. The job is handled by the TikTok algorithms, and since they’re just computer programs unable to judge videos based on their quality, the algos award exposure based on two metrics: follower count and follower growth.

The first standard is obvious; users with lots of followers get added exposure. Follower growth is somewhat different. It helps the algorithms identify accounts rapidly adding new fans, which also receive a broader audience across the platform. And here’s what’s important: adding new TikTok followers, even purchased ones, boosts the follower growth metric and content visibility.

Many users who see the account’s posts for the first time get their first opportunity to view the videos, like them, and decide to follow the TikTok creator. As long as the posts contain compelling content that the new audience likes, organic follower growth begins rapidly and delivers more fans than the user could find manually.

One detail is crucial. All purchased followers must be real people with real accounts on the app. As you might guess, however, those aren’t easy for digital marketing services to source and deliver.

The vast majority of vendors use bots to create what are known as “fake followers,” technical sleight-of-hand designed to look legitimate. But the algorithms quickly detect and delete them, they don’t help grow audiences, and TikTok users who buy fake interactions can find their accounts penalized or even banned.

It’s not a simple task to find social media marketing companies that can deliver so-called real TikTok followers, since any website willing to sell fake ones is also willing to lie about their service and products. The safest approach is to patronize one of the five top-ranked TikTok marketing services, all of which can be counted on to provide legitimate followers.

1. Twicsy — Twicsy has been delivering high-quality, real followers ever since TikTok became available in the Western world, and is consistently ranked #1 among TikTok services. As many as 20,000 genuine followers can be delivered instantly at very affordable prices, and they provide outstanding organic growth.
2. Buzzoid — Buzzoid got into the TikTok game right after Twicsy, and except for their smaller maximum package of real followers (10,000 instead of 20,000), their quality, service, and support are on par with the top-ranked provider, as are the powerful results triggered by the interactions.
3. TokMatik — Newer to the TikTok service industry, TokMatik has quickly built its offerings to be competitive with the “big boys.” Follower growth may come in a notch below those providers, but the high-quality followers and support are right at the same level.
4. Rushmax — Rushmax has firmly established a reputation as the best “backup” TikTok follower option for users who want to vary the sources of their purchased followers. Quality and service are outstanding, and quite a few customers now use this provider as their primary supplier.
5. MegaFamous — MegaFamous only started delivering TikTok fans as a small business a couple of years ago, but their surge to the #5 ranking has been swift and impressive. They do everything right, and their high-quality followers deliver results right in line with TokMatik and Rushmax.

One important warning: purchased followers provided by reputable social media management services aren’t a golden ticket. They won’t be of much help to users who don’t take other important steps to turn their larger audiences into interaction and engagement.

We’ll discuss those steps in a bit, after looking at other strategies that content creators can use to bring in new TikTok followers.

Option 2: Finding New Followers Manually

Manual growth techniques require time. A lot of time. They also won’t generate the level of follower growth you’d see after buying real interactions. On the bright side, though, they’re free (although purchased followers are extremely affordable) and they can make you at least a little more popular than you’d be otherwise.

Here’s a sample of the approaches you can take; some are more obvious than others.

• Cross-promote your content: Create short versions of your best videos and post them to short-form areas of other social media platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, along with a watermark of your TikTok profile URL. That can bring in new viewers and followers who don’t use TikTok much.
• Create Stitches and Duets: Duets put you side-by-side with another creator, while Stitches let you add your own content following someone else’s. These TikTok features draw extra attention to your content, but their real value can be the extra exposure you get when the other creators also post your creation to their accounts.
• Collaborations and partnerships: TikTok content creation in conjunction with an influential user can give you great video to post, but more importantly, you’ll gain visibility with your partner’s large follower base when they upload the content.
• Giveaways: Running a contest for the best user-generated content created by your followers can win you added exposure when they post their entries to their TikTok timelines.
• Create a TikTok challenge or join a trending challenge: If you come up with a great idea for a challenge and can get some traction, you’ll earn more exposure than you could ever dream of. More realistically, entering a very creative video in a challenge created by a company trying to brand awareness can still earn you views and new followers.
• TikTok ads: Some users have found that running catchy, well-produced TikTok ads to promote their videos can bring in a stream of new followers.

That’s far from an exhaustive list. Keep your eyes open to see how other people are attracting traffic to their accounts, and use your imagination. You’ll undoubtedly come up with more ideas.

Turning Visibility into New TikTok Followers

Whichever growth option you choose, there’s no guarantee that added exposure and new visitors will translate into an increased follower count. There are numerous steps every user should take if their goal is attracting and keeping new followers; they fall into two categories.

Create A Robust Content Strategy

Your extended family may love checking your TikTok account to see videos of your kids. Your friends may enjoy seeing the vid you shot at that cool new restaurant. However, no one else likely will.

Surfers are only interested in following accounts that post the kind of content they enjoy most. There’s good news, though: TikTok’s enormous user base means there will almost certainly be lots of potential followers who like and enjoy the same things that you do. Here’s how to attract them.

• Choose a single topic you’re interested in, make it the focus of your account, and devote all of your videos to that subject. Appealing to a target audience won’t convince all of your new viewers to follow you, of course, but you’ll dramatically increase your chances of finding a good number of loyal fans. That marketing strategy has been successful for countless influencers.
• Focus on creating compelling, high-quality content, devoting as much time and effort as needed to produce the very best videos you can. So many content creators are vying for follows that it’s crucial to always put your best foot forward. Vary the formats and types of content you produce, too; funny vids mixed with serious ones or tutorials can make your account more interesting.
• If possible, try to include trending songs and even trending sounds in some of your videos. Believe it or not, that can help earn you more visibility from the algorithms. Information on TikTok trending audio is available in the app’s Creative Center and on the Discover page.
• Be sure to post regularly. That not only keeps your existing followers satisfied, but it also shows potential followers that they can depend on you for a continued stream of new content. It’s best to upload when your followers are most likely to be online, too; you can find that information with your TikTok analytics tools (the same ones you use to find follower demographics).

Pay Attention to Your Thumbnails and Captions

When surfers are scrolling their feeds or come across one of your posts, they don’t have to stop and watch. It takes only a second for them to move past your content. That makes it imperative to do everything possible to grab them and “compel” them to check out your video.

Choosing a great thumbnail will help. Don’t use a random frame from the video; take time to select one that makes casual viewers think “I have to see that!” Even better, create a custom thumbnail with a title that tells surfers at a glance what they’ll be missing if they scroll past. Many experts say that using a photo with faces in it boosts clickthrough rates as well.

Your caption should be just as enticing. Keep it short and simple to read, with the best “hook” right at the start. You’re allowed 4,000 characters, but put your best text at the start; phone app users only see 125 before they have to click to “see more.” Use the rest of your characters to include SEO keywords and trending topics to bring in search viewers.

Two other ideas for effective captions: it’s been shown that asking a question in your text and/or including a call to action (CTA) like “Add your ideas in the comments!” may bring in extra viewers.

Most people use hashtags, but the majority don’t use the right hashtags. Most important are relevant hashtags (which can bring in users searching for topics related to your video’s content) and trending hashtags, if they match your post’s subject. You can find trending hashtags on the app’s Discover page, or get ideas about TikTok trends by looking at your For You page (FYP).

None of these strategies, by themselves, will make you a TikTok influencer or boost your follower count to superstar levels. Using all of them, though, maximizes your chances of increasing your engagement rate and follower base by convincing viewers to interact with your account and converting your larger audience into dedicated fans.