TikTok is a rapidly growing social media platform with over 1 billion active users monthly. In fact, it is, at the moment, probably the most powerful platform you can post on, especially as a brand trying to build a loyal following and convert them into paying customers.

TikTok engagement plays a significant role here. TikTok offers a massive growth opportunity; however, with fierce competition, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd.

That’s why we created this guide.

While the TikTok algorithm is known to be unpredictable, there are some ways in which you can try and increase your TikTok engagement.

What Is TikTok Engagement?

Let’s start from the beginning – what is TikTok engagement? To put it simply, it’s every action someone takes on your account. That includes views, likes, comments, adding to favorites, and shares (whether they’re through DMs or on other public platforms).

So, how do you know your engagement rate? Here’s a very simple formula to calculate how your post is doing:

Instead of views, many also use followers count to calculate their engagement rate. It’s almost identical to the previous formula, with only one difference:

If you don’t want to calculate the engagement rate for each post individually, you can use this formula instead:

Let’s use an example instead of just talking about formulas. Let’s say you’re an account with 10,000 followers. Your total engagements, so the number of likes, comments, and shares on a recent post is 543, while your total view count is 35,000 views.

Here’s how your engagement rate calculation would look:

[ 543 / 10,000 ] x 100 = 5,43%

Or, when basing your calculation on views:

[ 543 / 35,000 ] x 100 = 1,55%

Now, let’s calculate that for your whole account. Let’s say you have published 121 videos up until now, and your overall engagement on all of them is 50,000. You managed to gather 800,000 views on all of your videos.

Here’s how the calculation would look based on followers:

[ ( 50,000 / 121 ) / 10,000 ] x 100 = 4.13%

And now, based on views:

[ ( 50,000 / 121 ) / 800,000 ] x 100 = 0,05%

As you can see, these two results significantly differ from each other, so you need to decide for yourself which of those will be more important to you. Of course, you can also use both of them, but remember that the results will almost always have a significant difference between each other.

Also, keep in mind that calculating your overall engagement might sometimes give you a less accurate result, particularly when you have one or more viral videos, as these will increase the overall statistics.

Why Does Engagement Matter?

You might be asking yourself, “Why do I need to know all of this?”. Well, you technically don’t have to if you’re happy with just posting and letting the app do its thing. However, if you want to take TikTok more seriously, understanding your own metrics can be very helpful in realizing what works and what doesn’t, so that you can adjust your content accordingly.

Having a high engagement rate shows the app that people find your post interesting enough to engage with it, and in most cases it sends signals to the TikTok algorithm that users enjoy your content, and will most likely put it on others’ For You Pages.

Engagement rate is also an important metric if you wish to become someone who collaborates with brands, as that’s one of the key metrics one will look for when deciding who to work with. Brands typically opt for people whose engagement rate matches their follower count, aka it’s not too small or too big.

And if you’re wondering, yes, brands can refuse to work with someone with a very high engagement rate (typically accompanied by a high likes to comments and shares ratio) on the suspicion that it isn’t organic, in which case there’s no real advantage for the brand.

So, what seems like a good engagement rate? The average engagement rate based on followers is 2.65%, while when calculated by views, it’s 4.07%. So, sticking to the examples, those engagement rates are actually not too bad – could they’ve been better? Of course, they always could. However, it’s still not a bad score.

How to Increase TikTok Engagement

As we mentioned, the algorithm can be unpredictable – however, there are still some ways to increase your chances for a higher engagement rate, aka receiving more likes, shares, and followers. We’ll share some of them here.

Engage with Your Audience

We cannot stress this enough – engaging with your audience is probably the easiest way to increase your engagement rate, especially if your comments encourage further discussion. After all, each comment matters when calculating the engagement rate.

This is especially great for makeup and beauty content, as there will always be someone asking where you got a product from – it’s a win-win, truly. You help out a follower, and in turn, they contribute to your engagement.

Take Advantage of Viral Sounds and Trends

If you use the TikTok app regularly, then you know that every few days, there’s a new trend or a new viral sound that takes it by storm. When that happens, every few scrolls or so your For You Page will be showing you videos with that specific sound or trend – and while it might be annoying for some users, it is a great opportunity for anyone who wants to improve their engagement rate.

However, remember to add your own twist to the trend or sound – don’t copy and paste something you saw on your For You Page. Consider how you can use the sound in relation to you or a situation that happened to you. Follow the trends, but at the same time stay original.

Not sure how to find viral TikTok sounds? Take a look at our comprehensive guide on this topic.

Encourage Interactions

Instead of waiting around for engagement, how about you try to create a video that will encourage it? That’s exactly what Rynaiar’s TikTok account did, and it turned out to be a great decision, as they accumulated over 1.7 million likes, which is hundreds of times more than their usual 5 – 15 thousand likes per post. The post is, at the moment of writing, their second most liked video ever.

Use Hashtags Thoughtfully

Using the right hashtags can help you significantly when trying to increase your reach, and therefore engagement. They’re also a powerful tool in ensuring that you reach the target audience for a particular topic.

When choosing the hashtags for your TikTok video, opt for a combination of niche and popular ones. Don’t stick to only popular ones, as those might harm your engagement rate – popular hashtags are typically very broad, and if the viewer is not a part of the audience you’re trying to reach, they will most likely not interact with your video beyond watching it. At the same time, you shouldn’t only stick to niche hashtags, as they tend to have a significantly smaller reach.

Just take a look at the #fyp hashtag – it has over 6 billion posts, so you can only imagine the reach it has. However, at the same time, with this amount of content, it’s very easy for yours to get lost or end up on the For You Page of someone who is simply disinterested in what you post.

Let’s say you want to post a video of your cat. Of course, you’d want to use the hashtag #cat or #cats. However, if you look at the numbers, both of them have a significant number of posts – so while it might help you with reach, it might not necessarily help you with engagement.

For help with engagement, you might want to address a more specific group of users – for example, by using a hashtag with your cat’s breed. As an example, let’s use ragdoll cats.

Post Often, But Keep Up the Quality

Some sources recommend posting 1 to 4 times a day for your TikTok engagement to take off, but that’s not necessarily always the case. Of course, you can post this often if you want – however, as long as the quality of your TikToks stays consistent. If you’re posting something just for the sake of posting, then it might have the opposite effect.

What we would recommend, in this case, is setting a few hours aside to film more content at one go so that you have enough time to edit it, re-record if required, and have something up your sleeve for when you don’t have the energy or time to create content from scratch.

However, aside from how often, when also plays a role in engagement. Thankfully, TikTok has a pretty nice feature called “Most active times,” which shows you when most of the people who viewed your content were active on the app. Use it to your advantage to see when the best hour to post would be.

Try to Encourage User-Generated Content (UGC)

This one is particularly important for brands. We live in times where social media users are becoming more and more skeptical of products and services being advertised by influencers and celebrities. Recommendations and reviews done by ordinary people are much more trustworthy in their eyes, so as a brand, you should take advantage of that.

If someone posts a video using your product or service and tags you in it, share it on your brand profile (of course, after getting permission from the original creator)!

If there are no videos about it yet, but you know that your brand does well with customers, you can always encourage them to create some content – for example, by offering them a discount or some other benefit if you repost their video.

Walmart is a great example of a brand utilizing UGC to their advantage. The majority of videos you can see on their page have been prepared by regular customers – Walmart looks for them to re-publish them on their page. They also have a link in their bio that leads to a page mimicking their profile but this time with links to the specific products so if anyone is interested in them, they have an easy way to find them.

Stick to a Niche

Think about what you want to focus on. Do you want to be an account that people go to for aesthetic inspo? Or maybe you want to be a comedy account that your viewers will reach for when they need a little pick-me-up? Deciding upfront what you want your niche to be is essential in crafting your content to reach as many people as you can who might be interested in it.

Of course, you can also become an account that has a little bit of everything. However, it might be more difficult to keep up the engagement rate that way, as if someone followed you for the aesthetic aspect of your account, they might not be interested in the funnier side of you, and vice versa.

The Bottom Line

Engagement rate is an important TikTok metric for a number of reasons – but to put its significance simply, the more people engage with your content, the more the app’s algorithm might want to show it to other people, and the more opportunities for collaboration you might be faced with, especially with brands.

Truth be told, increasing your engagement rate often requires trial and error. Just because something worked out for another account doesn’t necessarily mean it will also work for you.

At Bukoid, we understand that getting high TikTok engagement can be a tough and time-consuming process. That’s why we created a comprehensive and organic TikTok growth service. Whether you want to focus on increasing your like count, getting more followers, or something else, we’ve got you covered.

Get in touch with us today, and let us help you increase your TikTok engagement organically with our all-encompassing growth service!