TikTok is one of the fastest growing social networks. In a very short period of time, the app has become one of the most used apps worldwide, especially by GenZ and millenials (but not only). With more than 800 million active users per month, the short video platform is more attractive than ever to advertisers in all sectors. In this dynamic, it is now necessary to know the key KPIs of TikTok to really perform on the network. The experts at Kolsquare are pleased to offer you an overview of the key indicators that you absolutely must know and master in order to take full advantage of the power of TikTok. Let's get started!
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, it’s worth asking who can access statistics on TikTok. Well, almost anyone. At least, anyone with a TikTok Business account. According to TikTok, these accounts offer “creative tools that allow businesses to think like marketers but act like creators”. You can therefore access a range of statistics on your account once it has been upgraded to “Business” status.
The procedure is rather simple and quick for those who have not yet taken the plunge:
Now you can benefit from all the statistics offered by TikTok (and there are many). Let’s now take a closer look at the main KPIs that you should be tracking and mastering on the social network in 2022.
Although it may seem basic, the number of videos published is an indicator not to be ignored on TikTok. Indeed, the number of videos published is often correlated to the growth of an account, provided, of course, that the content is attractive and that the audience finds it interesting. The total number of videos posted also gives you an idea of the general activity of your account: is it very active and does it offer a lot of new content every day?
The average recommendation to perform at your best on TikTok is to post 1 to 4 videos per day depending upon the platform itself. It is therefore useful to see what the total number of videos published by an account is, to better understand its production rate, creativity and consistency.
If you’re using TikTok to promote your brand, one of the first metrics to watch is the number of video views. Every time your video is viewed for at least 5 seconds, know that this counts as a view on the social network. The total number of views of your videos shows that your strategy is working, that people are seeing and engaging with your TikTok content, or that you need to change your approach and content to reach your target audience in a sustainable way.
To get access to these statistics about the total number of views of your videos, you can go to the “Overview” tab where you can observe and analyse the statistics for the last 7 or 28 days or choose a custom date range.
When we talk about the reach of a piece of content, we are referring to the total number of unique people who have seen your content after you have published it over a given period of time. Reach gives you an insight into how well known your brand and its account is on TikTok. So if your brand’s goal on the platform is to increase awareness, one of the things you should focus on is increasing your reach.
How do you calculate your average reach?
Reach allows you to know the audience reached. Using the following formula, you can find out the percentage of reach of your post in relation to your total audience:
(Audience reached / Total number of followers) X 100 = Percentage of reach of the message
Measuring the percentage reach of each of your posts will help you identify the type of videos that your target audience enjoys most and will also allow you to adapt your content strategy to achieve virality and reach a much wider audience than your core audience.
There is no single formula for calculating the average engagement rate on social networks today and TikTok is no exception to the rule. Nevertheless, two formulas stand out and are mainly used by Influence Marketing professionals. The most common formula consists of adding up the “likes” and “comments” interactions, then dividing the result by the total number of followers and finally multiplying this number by 100. This formula is the easiest to use since the data is visible to anyone. It therefore allows you to calculate the average engagement rate of a KOL (Key Opinion Leader) quickly and easily, for example:
((Number of likes + Number of comments) / Number of followers) * 100
But new forms of interaction have arisen over the months, and nowadays we don’t just count likes and comments as “types of engagement”. There are also “shares”, which are widely used, especially on TikTok. The following formula allows us to take them into account:
((Number of likes + Number of comments + Number of shares) / Number of Followers) * 100
Another formula allows you to calculate your engagement rate according to the number of people who have actually seen the publication. Indeed, today, with the arrival of algorithms, all of our followers do not necessarily see all of our content, so it can be interesting to calculate its rate of engagement on the effective reach rather than on the total number of followers. In other words, via this formula:
((Number of likes + Number of comments + Number of shares) / Total reach) * 100
The total evolution of followers is the number of followers acquired over a specific period of time, data directly available in the “overview” tab. This indicator allows you to see the growth of your account over a period of 7 or 28 days. This is another key indicator to follow when working with TikTok content creators. Indeed, thanks to this KPI you can see if they are constantly growing their accounts in order to partner you with creators who can provide a good return on investment in the future or if on the contrary, their growth tends to stagnate, or worse, to decrease.
Hashtags are essential to develop your account on TikTok. Measuring their performance is therefore essential to ensure that they are used in the most relevant way possible for your brand. If chosen effectively, they can drastically increase the visibility of your posts and help you to be discovered by a wider audience. The social network highlights many “trending” hashtags, which should not be overlooked as they represent a great opportunity for growth. Be aware that hashtags change very quickly, so keep an eye on them and include them in your post descriptions when you create content that relates to them.
As part of an Influence Marketing campaign, creating a hashtag, around a challenge for example, can be an excellent idea if it is picked up by a large number of users. You can then track the performance of this particular hashtag: number of uses, global reach, interactions generated, etc. and calculate the ROI of your campaign.
To carry out your strategy on the platform, you can also follow the performance of related hashtags that are directly proposed by TikTok. These are hashtags that are frequently used in your theme. For example, when one searches for the popular hashtag “#foryoupage“, the related hashtag “foryou” is immediately proposed and can also represent a great opportunity to gain visibility.
This indicator is particularly useful for identifying hot trends on TikTok, so that you can take full advantage of them for even more virality. You can also use this indicator to identify content creators with whom you would like to develop an Influence Marketing campaign in your niche.
One of the main objectives of most brands is to drive traffic to their website to ultimately generate conversions and sales. Using TikTok as a referral acquisition channel is possible, although difficult, as it is currently only possible to add a clickable link from the account’s bio.
Nevertheless, the statistics offered by the social network allow you to follow the number of clicks made to your redirection page over a given period. Thanks to the use of UTM tags, you can also measure the traffic generated by the various content creators that you have activated as part of your Influence Marketing projects on TikTok.
When is the best time to post on TikTok? A question that everyone who wants to develop their account has asked themselves at one time or another. Unfortunately, there is no single answer to this big question. It depends largely on your strategy, your goals and your resources, but here are a few things to guide you.
Generally speaking, the best time to post on TikTok is between 6am and 10am and 7pm and 11pm. The best days to post on the social platform are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. However, these times may not be suitable for everyone. To know the best time to post on TikTok for you, we recommend that you observe the times when your followers are most active on the network, directly in your statistics. To do this, simply scroll down to the “Followers” tab in your “Analytics”. Here you can see how many followers are active on different days and times of the week. You can also try posting at different times to see what works best for you, because as we stated earlier in this article, there is no one right rule for this.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.
