TikTok is hard – Monthly Goal Review

My current goals, which determine where I’m focusing my time, don’t give much time for blogging – so I’m not worrying about it. But I still want to take the time to review my goals each month.

It’s actually been a month and a half, oh well, here we go.

Goals:

  • Post 3 videos a week directed at artists
  • 1,000 followers on TikTok
  • Don’t worry about going viral, just focus on getting 1K views per video consistently
  • Get 10,000 views on a video
  • Take my TikTok videos and start posting them on Instagram and Facebook to starting building a following on those platforms as well
  • Post 1 video a week directed at people interested in affiliate marketing (on my separate account with that focus), Not worrying about views, or followers, but just to build consistency there
  • Review goals in 1 month

Results:

  • I averaged 3 videos a week until this last week 2 weeks (I’ve needed some time to assess and regroup, explanation to come)
  • 39 followers (+20)
  • Hitting around 600 on average (meh)
  • Got 4,202 on one 
  • Started posting on other platforms, getting views, and adding subscribers!
  • Did this the first week, accidentally posted it to my other account first, unlisted that, and posted to the right account – I think TikTok flagged it as unoriginal content and it got 0 views – and that pretty much took the wind out of those sails. 
  • Just a couple weeks behind schedule, but I’m doing it 

What I learned:

To begin with I got very discouraged and depressed a couple weeks ago. I spent a bunch of time on a video I really liked and thought it would get good results. For whatever reason TikTok didn’t show it to anyone. I unlisted it and will edit it and try it again later. This happened to my first video, the re-uploaded video got over 900 views. 

I spent a bunch of time on another. I felt it had a great hook and would interest loads of people – it got 300 views. 

I took a look at my analytics – which probably can’t tell me anything that useful with such small sample sizes (low views). But when 50% of people skip your video by 3 seconds, they can’t possibly have even listened to your verbal hook. That means the “visual hook” is bad ineffective. And when that hook includes one’s own face … well it doesn’t feel good. 

But I can’t take this personally – for a thousand different reasons.

So beyond just getting depressed – here are a couple interesting things I noticed in the analytics that may be relevant. 

My most watched (by far) video to date got me 6 followers. Then I had videos with 246 views that got me 6. The one that got more views, was more general, so I suppose appealed to more people. The one that got 246 was very niche but apparently appealed to a higher percentage of people in that niche. The niche I most care about.

Sometimes more views does not equal reaching more of the people we actually want to reach. 

The one that got more views also got more negative feedback – so certainly not reaching the audience I want to reach. But maybe helping me reach more of the people I do want to reach – probably shouldn’t read too much into it yet. 

But here’s another interesting thing – looking at where my views are coming from, only a very small percentage of my followers are watching my other videos. So we may need to get followers for certain things, but we shouldn’t be too worried about followers, because it doesn’t necessarily mean more views.

One thing I have been focused on is commenting on other influential people’s videos in my niche. Getting their attention, and getting them to interact back can be very valuable. I managed to get one of these people to follow me, and I can see that he is watching and liking my videos. So that was nice. 

I really need to work on my hooks. But most importantly the visual hooks – something that will grab attention, and get people to watch long enough to actually learn what the video is about. Then if they aren’t interested at least they aren’t interested in the content, not simply rejecting the video before they even know what it’s about. 

So that’s a new sub-goal for the 3 videos a week

The other thing I realized that I neglected is that most of my videos were more focused on movie-making, not artists in general. So I’m going to recommit to trying to make my videos more appealing to a wider audience than just people who want to make movies. 

I will not give up. I will NOT stop doing what I know I must do to succeed. I will stay focused on the task I’ve committed to, instead of quitting it when it gets hard or discouraging, and then trying something new (rinse and repeat all the way to never succeeding). 

The other day I heard my mentor Dean Holland say – 80% of success is becoming the person you need to become to succeed. I will be the person I know I need to be, that I know I can be – which is committed and consistent. 

I know I can do this, even though it isn’t easy. 

These same goals will be my focus over the next month. So again, I may go another month without blogging. If that’s the case, it’s not because I’ve given up on blogging, it’s just because it’s not the task I need to focus on at this moment to achieve my goals.

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Comments

4 responses to “TikTok is hard – Monthly Goal Review”

  1. Sometimes just when you think have mastered TikTok it strikes back to give you 200 to 300 views. I suggest you pick out other people in your nich and view their videos especially the one that hav e done well. Keep it up

  2. Hi Nathan,

    Your commitment to your goals is inspiring! I can relate to the challenges of navigating TikTok and the frustration when a video doesn’t perform as expected.

    Your focus on improving visual hooks and appealing to a broader audience is a smart move. Engaging with others in your niche is also key for growth I have found.

    Keep pushing through the challenges. Your dedication to consistency and learning from your analytics will pay off, and I’m excited to see how your channel evolves! I’ll have to look you up..

    Meredith

  3. Hi Nathan,
    Great to read your post. One quick question: why not transpose your video script – or portions thereof – to your blog?
    that way you’d cover another great base without having to work harder.
    Smarter not harder – another thing Dean wants us to understand and commit to!

  4. Hello – I love this post! Goal setting is so important and it is also important to know how to adjust when our goals might be out of line or when we need to refocus. I truly love your transparency and how you have tackled your video production and made adjustments. It takes a lot of courage to not give up and this is truly inspiring. I absolutely appreciate what you said in your post, “I will not give up. I will NOT stop doing what I know I must do to succeed.” This is so excellent and thank you for the motivation!

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