While TikTok may be fun and games for users, marketers know better.
This social media channel is chock-full of essential metrics to help brands create more engaging and relevant content for their audience, so let’s get straight to it: TikTok analytics.
Read below to learn what to look for on the TikTok analytics platform, how to interpret the data you find, and how to use that data to grow your brand’s presence.
Access your TikTok analytics
The first thing to know is that you must have a business or influencer account to access TikTok analytics instead of a standard account.
Switch to a professional account with:
Click on hamburger icon (top right)> Settings and privacy > Account management > Switch to a business account > Select your business category.
Once you’re set, you can navigate your analytics by:
Click on hamburger (top right)> Click Builder Tools > Click Analytics.
Screenshot from TikTok, September 2022Review TikTok analytics data
When you navigate your analytics page, you’ll see three different categories at the top of the screen that you can click on to get more data: Overview, Content, and Followers.
summary
Like other social analytics platforms, TikTok offers a snapshot of how your content has performed over a specific period and percentage increase or decrease since the previous period (shown in blue).
This data includes two important aspects of your channel:
- Video views: Shown in graphical form, you can easily pick out the trends over the past month on your channel regarding the number of people who watched your videos.
- File Views: Here, you will see the number of likes, comments, and shares for each video that you have posted over a certain period.
Additional metrics shown under the Overview tab include:
- Likes: The number of likes your videos received in the specified date range.
- comments: The number of comments your videos have received in the specified date range.
- Involved: The number of shares of your videos received in the specified date range.
- followers: The total number of users who follow your account and how that has changed over the specified date range.
- Content: The number of videos you shared in the specified date range.
followers
When you scroll down on the same overview page, you’ll then see that you can click on Followers analytics (it’s also there as a tab at the top of the screen, as shown above).
Here you will be able to see:
- How many followers do you have on your account?
- The growth rate of your followers since the previous period you selected.
- Demographic information about your followers, such as gender and location.
- The hours when your followers are most active.
- The days when your followers are most active.
- The sounds your followers have listened to.
While the actual analytics page may not look like much, we consider this to be the primary metric that TikTok offers (more on this later).
Content
The Content tab on the Analytics page is a great way to see what content you post is getting the most attention.
You’ll see this tab divided into several subsections showing data from the past seven days, including:
- Video posts: Here, you can see the last nine videos you posted and select the one with the most views.
- Popular videos: The videos with the fastest growth in views over the past week are presented here.
- Video views by section: Here, you can see if people have found your video via your profile, someone else’s profile, or if you’ve appeared in their feed.
- Video views by region: This helps you understand where your content geographically resonates.
- Average watch time: We love this scale because it helps show what catches your eye!
- Total playing time: Unlike average watch time per video, Total Uptime shows you the cumulative watch time of anyone who has viewed your videos.
NB: If you have more than 1000 followers on TikTok, you are eligible to host TikTok live videos. With live videos comes another analytics page to see precisely how your live video is performing. Learn how to start a live TikTok video here.
Additional: Total Participation Rates
SocialChamp Offers a little hack to help you get another metric that might be useful: total engagement rates.
Simply follow one of the formulas below to calculate this number:
Photo by author, September 2022Monitor TikTok Hashtags
The metrics surrounding hashtags are not found in the same place as the metrics discussed above. However, it is still useful to analyze different hashtags in your niche and see how many times a post with a particular hashtag was viewed.
To find this data, use the search bar to find a hashtag.
Here, you will be able to see the number of views the hashtag has, the top videos using the hashtag, and related hashtags.
Photomontage: Screenshots from TikTok, author collage, September 2022Use TikTok analytics to grow your channel
Each section of TikTok analytics provides you with the valuable insight needed to grow your page and influence the right audience. Here are the three main points:
Learn the ideal times to post content
This is a hanging fruit. Find out what time (day and time) your followers are engaged on the platform, and this is when you should aim to post.
Understand which videos people like
See which videos people engage with the most through likes, comments, and watch time.
If you find that your funny videos outperform your informative videos, you know what to do!
These metrics should help guide your content creation strategy.
Find out what works with your audience off your page
Look at the analytics of the popular votes your audience likes and the hashtags they use, and start incorporating them into your videos in the future.
Final thoughts
Love it or hate it, TikTok isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Even if your audience isn’t on TikTok yet, we suspect more and more will embrace this platform, just as they eventually did with Instagram.
Therefore, getting a head start on understanding how it works and creating a channel that resonates with and engages your target audience is best. (Remember, you can always repurpose your TikTok content for platforms like Instagram and Facebook!).
We wish you a happy analysis!
More resources:
- TikTok Ads for Beginners: A Complete Guide and Steps to Success
- How to use TikTok search to find content, community, and creators
- Social Media Marketing: A Complete Strategy Guide
Featured image: Petryshak/Shutterstock
