How I got 20k TikTok Followers in 50 days!

Tiktok? Are you insane? That's for kids!

It's a funny thing to finally get some level of success on social media in possibly the most unexpected of places.

Mine has been here: https://tiktok.com/@eatthecountry?

Those who know me well will know that over the last ten or twelve years I've tried all kinds of weird and wonderful social media channels, anything from puppets to weird sports.

All of these adventures were good fun but ultimately the effort wasn't worth the return and I simply couldn't find a platform and a style that seemed to drive the level of engagement I was looking for.

Then, after a number of people had suggested it, I decided to give TikTok a go.

My first proper post entitled 'Death or Dinner' which was a little film about Woody Nightshade, a very nasty plant indeed was put up on February 16th.

Before that date I'd put up a couple of things to almost no response at all.

I recut the footage to portrait, put on a couple of graphics and fired it off.

I woke up the following morning and lazily took a look to see if anyone had bothered to watch it.

To my UTTER AMAZEMENT I now had over 2000 followers and thousands of views.

Well that wasn't supposed to happen.

I decided to try a few more, and more, and more.

In the following month and a half I posted close to fifty of these short, quick to make, videos about food and foraging, all a little bit edgy and wry, perhaps a bit less worthy than the usual fare for a forager or foodie.

The numbers speak for themselves.

In that time I had accumulated over 22,000 followers, 80,000 likes and one of the videos topped 300k views.

Not to mention an average engagement rate of 11.7% and average likes of over 900 per post together with numerous comments on each post.

So how the hell did this happen?

Well, I think a couple of things I'd learned before were in my favour.

1) Short form video content is hard to find a home for on other platforms but it's perfect for TikTok and that's the kind of film I like to make.

2) Without realising it I had played right into the hands of the mysterious TikTok algorithm which seems to like content with lots of the presenter's face in it...no need for glossy high end video and tricks or glamorous slow motion footage here...TikTok is all about the content, the story, the personality and a few interesting facts that are perhaps lesser known.

I also knew that my passion for Local, Seasonal & Sustainable food happens to tally with the current zeitgeist for all things green.

And, through years of story editing video in my various roles I've learned to get to the point and deliver information quickly, which works on this channel.

So what now?

What on Earth does a guy who's knocking on 50 do with a TikTok following?

Well, there's a lot of conflicting information about what you can do on TikTok and how many followers, level of engagement, subject matter etc. you need to actually generate an income from it.

I'll be contacting brands of course to see if they'd like to work with me, but also I hope to take these rather unexpected learnings into other projects and possibly help others to build a following for their brands using similar techniques.

The bottom line is; keep trying stuff, never give up, always follow your dreams and then something really odd might happen one day.

And when it does...grab it with both hands.