Appeasing The TikTok Gods

Good and Bad

I thought I’d share with you some of the negative and positive experiences I’ve been having with TikTok and Facebook just recently. As I may have mentioned in a previous post, I have chosen TikTok as my primary platform and Facebook as my secondary to get myself out there, using videos as my weapon of choice.

First Negative Encounter

After posting the initial two videos on TikTok, I thought I would test the water, so to speak. I was encouraged by TikTok to promote them, so I thought, “yeah, let’s give it a go”. So, for the first two videos, I paid just $3 and $4 AUS respectively, for a one-day campaign. The first video was a very nervous attempt at introducing myself and the second was my attempt at defining what affiliate marketing is.

There was no mention of my website/blog in either one, and the only call-to-action was requesting the viewer to follow me. It all seemed to be so innocent, or so I thought. The TikTok gods had other ideas and the next thing I received was the below notification.

There was a follow up notification saying that the payment had been refunded and I could either withdraw the amount from my account or use it towards a future campaign.

I thought to myself, gosh these people are so picky about what we mere mortals can talk about in our videos. A more likely explanation is that I hadn’t established myself sufficiently. I think this was verified a few days down the track but more of that later.

Oh No, Not Again

My next encounter with displeasing the TikTok higher authorities came after a few more videos were posted. I noticed that my followers were increasing slowly but surely, albeit some of them appeared to be duplicates or maybe the same person with multiple accounts. I started to get messages from a few followers who were also into affiliate marketing or similar. They were initially very nice, introducing themselves and so forth. After a couple of pleasant exchanges, a couple of them started asking if I’d be interested in their affiliate marketing program or bitcoin or some other shiny object that they were promoting.  I replied that I wasn’t interested as I had my own program that I was following.

The next thing I received was the below notification banning me from using the direct message facility for a month. I’m not sure if was something I said or what the other person said, but obviously something had upset them.

Here’s A Good Thing

A few TikTok videos later I thought I would try the paid ad option again. Up to this point, my videos had been struggling to get views in the 200s. But was I concerned? No; Ok make that yes. This time, I chose a three-day campaign and was able to use the funds from the previous rejected campaign, as well as chipping in a few more dollars to make up the difference. So far, I am pleased to report that it has attracted over 3,000 views and added nearly 20 more followers.

And Now Facebook

I’d been posting a few videos on Facebook and I must admit I’m pretty disappointed with the results; a paltry number of views on each.

Time to dip my toes in an ad campaign on Facebook. I believe they call it “promoting” a video. Once I’d gone through the process of setting it up, I was presented with the below message. I was quite surprised as the video I had chosen made no mention of a landing page, functional or not.

Anyway, I went ahead and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was approved. It’s been running for a day so far and has had views in the 300s, although I am finding it difficult to follow Facebook’s statistics sometimes. An interesting point about the target audience. As FB insists that you put in a location for your target audience and I didn’t just want to restrict it to Australia (where I am); I added USA, UK, New Zealand and South Africa. So far, all the responses I’ve had are from people from South Africa despite it being last on the list. Oh well, let’s see what the next couple of days brings.

I hope you have gained something out of this. Let me know in the comments.

Until next time,

Take care.