TikTok’s #ForYou Page: How It Works and How We Can Use It To Our Advantage

To begin, let’s discuss what factors contribute to their For You page. We often hear of algorithms, curated videos, user preferences etc, but what does all of that entail? Essentially, TikTok’s For You page is like a machine, it uses something called a ‘recommendation system’. We see this system everywhere, whether on a search engine, other social media sites, or shopping sites. This system is meant to help tailor the best experiences for a user, by understanding their preferences. Hence why their user interactions (comments, likes, shares, following, content creation) are so important. TikTok needs to understand what areas they are interested in and find videos to match that. This is when video information (captions, hashtags, sounds) comes in handy.

For creators, establishing your niche is extremely important. You can do this through related hashtags, keywords in your captions, name, username, and bio. This way, it reaches your target audience, allowing you to quickly build a loyal and supportive community most of whom will share the same interest as you or are interested in your type of content. The third contributing factor to the recommendation system is one’s device and account settings. This factor is weighed far less than the other two, however, it’s a good starting point for TikTok when they haven’t been able to gather a user’s preference yet. Another strong indicator is how long the video is being played. This shows their interest in the content and how valuable it is to them.

NEW TIKTOK UPDATE

Recently, TikTok released an update that showcases the number of times your video has been favourited. Its addition to the 4 other action buttons demonstrates the emphasis that TikTok is putting on this button in terms of the algorithm and recommendations. It is well known that favourites, comments, and shares do more to boost a post than likes, but this new update shows us just how important favouriting and sharing a post has become. Favouriting something tells the system quite a lot about your taste as favourites are usually rarer than likes. People put things in “Favourites” because they genuinely enjoy the content, not because of someone telling them to “like and comment!”. The more valuable or relatable your content is, the more likely they are to save it for later or share it with their friends.

So, what does all of this mean for creators like YOU

Find a niche
- Engaging in social listening and seeing if there are already established creators who create videos similar to the ones you are aiming to create
  - Look at their name, profile pictures, and bios and note down keywords you would like to use in your own
  - Look at their captions and hashtags (which videos get the most views/engagement?) note down keywords/hashtags and phrases
- If there isn’t any, brainstorm keywords for your own account and try and find similarities between your account and others.
  - By having a similarity, it is much easier to help each other and establish an audience.
    - A similarity can be “we are both small businesses” or “we both run the account with 2 other people”
    - They can be vague and far stretched but reaching out to people is still a must
They are big on diversifying the For You page while also trying to recommend similar videos
- This means that when recreating trends, make sure you are targeting them to your niche.
- Simply recreating trends is not enough if you want to grow your audience and keep them engaged
  - Most trends are a sound, a dance, etc. so you simply cannot wait for a trend made for your niche. YOU have to take charge and change it so that it fits YOUR content.
Use Call-To-Actions
- Even if it may sound cheesy and doesn’t seem like it's working, CTAs, especially when you make them relatable and target them specifically to the user (ex. Using the word “you”) can be super effective.
  - This is important to keep in mind with the new update as likes, comments, and shares are simply not enough anymore.