It’s human nature. We tend to positively impact the things we pay the most attention to—in other words, the things we measure. If you’re on TikTok purely for fun, metrics might not matter to you, but if TikTok is part of your company’s integrated marketing strategy, you’ll likely want to know how to measure performance to tell if the time you’re spending on the platform is worth the effort.
On every social media platform, there are some pretty common things most marketers want to know:
What’s my engagement: Is my target audience interacting with what I’m presenting? Are they liking and commenting on what I’m posting?
Am I reaching my audience? How many impressions am I earning? Are people visiting my social media to consume my content?
Am I earning referrals? Are people sharing my content with their friends?
Are visitors to my content converting into prospects or customers?
And what is the response rate? Of total visitors, how many are engaging with me in the sales/marketing funnel?
The above metrics are a good starting point to measure the effectiveness of social media generally, not let’s talk about TikTok specifically.
How to view analytics on TikTok
I think it’s safe to say, with over 1 billion active users, TikTok is a platform many marketers are considering along with their other social media marketing/advertising. Fortunately, TikTok includes an analytics tool with the app that will give you the ability to follow how many users you have, video views, and how many people like and comment on your videos. It will also track how many people are visiting your profile to learn more about you, you’ll be able to see how many people have bookmarked any particular video, and how many videos get shared.
Accessing and viewing TikTok analytics is pretty straightforward:
Go to your profile
Click on the three dots (...)
Choose “Creator Tools”
Select “Analytics”
Although there are a number of analytics features that are available to every TikTok user, if you are a business owner or social media manager, you may want to consider upgrading your basic account to a TikTok Pro account. It doesn’t cost you anything and will give you easier access to better analytics. You can also choose whether you want to set your profile as a “creator” or a “business.”
Here’s how you do that:
Go to your profile page
Use the hamburger menu in the upper right corner to access the settings and privacy tab
Choose, manage account
Scroll to and select, Account Control
Choose, Switch to Business Account
Fill out the necessary details
Press Done to upgrade your account to a Business account
Now that you have analytics set up, what can see so you can make data-driven decisions about what to create, what’s working, and even what isn’t working.
What to look for in TikTok analytics
TikTok analytics gives you a view into a handful of data points that will give you insight into how well your content is being received.
Video Views
You can see individual video views on each of your videos on your home page, but you can also see total video views across all your published videos. The default is for the last 7 days, but you can also see the last 28 days, the last 60 days, or set up a custom parameter. At the end of the month, for example, I like to make a month-over-month comparison to the previous month.
Profile Views
Growing up in the 70s, there were a lot of one-hit-wonders in the music world. You don’t want your content to be a one-hit-wonder. Profile views give you some insight into whether or not you audience is interested enough in you, or your brand, to learn more.
Followers Report
TikTok is a completely algorithm-based platform. In other words, what gets served up to your audience is based not only on what they view, but also what they follow—so insight into your followers is pretty important. In addition to a total count of how many followers you have, you’ll get insight on:
The number of new followers
How that number has changed over the selected time period
The gender of your followers
The day of the week and the time of day your followers are active
What part of the world, by country, your followers are from
The videos they are watching
And the sounds (and music) your followers are listening to
This information will help you adapt your content to match what your audience likes to see.
Content Analytics
You can see, based on your timeline selection, the videos you’ve published and if you have any trending videos from your profile.
Individual Post Analytics
Individual posts also include a selection of data the app captures in real time.
The number of time the video is played
The number of likes
The number of comments (you can click through to see what those comments are)
The number of shares
The number of bookmarks
You can also see a scroll on top of your video that will show you who has played your video as well as who has liked it.
Success won’t happen overnight
Because of the algorithm, most creators don’t build a huge following overnight. You’ll want to focus on quality content at constant intervals. Think in terms of how many times each day (at least each week) you’re going to post. If you only post once per month, you won’t gain much traction on TikTok. In reality, 2-3 times per day probably isn’t too frequent.
Building a strong TikTok presence takes time and effort. In Russia they say, “The first pancake always fails.” In other words, your audience will be smallest in the very beginning as you’re trying to figure things out. Just keep going.
