Saumirah McWoodson

Even though I’ve only been posting on TikTok 3 times per day for 5 days now (since Monday, April 18, 2022 and today is the morning of Saturday, April 23, 2022), I wanted to jot down for myself and also share with you some initial observations. Here it goes:

1. Short videos (hovering around 6 to 8 seconds) still seem to perform best for my account. I know there was a trend of 7-second videos with text for a while. Well, that still seems to do well on my account. (Only a couple of weeks ago, TikTok began allowing videos that are a maximum of 10 minutes. Typically, platforms will give priority to accounts that utilize their newest features. I haven’t been trying videos longer than 30 seconds maximum, I’d say. And, based on the data of how my videos perform, I likely won’t try this any time soon. Working toward quick results is part of my action plan.)
2. Videos that I post early in the morning (around 6:00 am) and in the evening (between 6:00 pm and 10:00 pm) seem to do best.
3. I noticed that there is possibly a sweet spot at 8:30 pm on Friday evenings, but this could be a coincidence.
4. Adding an effect to the video doesn’t guarantee that it will perform better or be pushed out to the For You Page.

Descriptions of My Videos That Have Done the BEST (over 1000 views) in the past 5 Days (Titles in quotations are the cover photo titles I used for the video):

1. “Tips for Développé à la Seconde” (6 seconds)
   • Posted Wednesday, April 20, 2022 @ 10:34 pm
   • 1636 plays since posting
   • Short ballet exercise
   • EDUCATE: Described 4 quick tips for improving this ballet movement; text flashed across screen for about 2 seconds; website also showed at end of video for about 1 second; no comments
2. Woman Owned Business” (6.55 seconds)
   • Posted Thursday, April 21, 2022 @ 7:59 pm
   • 1451 plays since posting
   • Warming up in pointe shoes
   • ENGAGE: Used original sound from a female music artist/entrepreneur and text described that I was feeling good after a virtual meeting with my women business owner support group; text invited other women business owners to comment and follow in exchange for a follow-back; 11 total comments so far (including my replies to each comment)
3. “Give Me New Tap Dance Steps to Try” (14.02 seconds)
   • Posted Monday, 4/18/22 @ 9:22 pm
   • 1200 plays since posting
   • Short, beginning tap exercise
   • ENGAGE: Text asked audience for recommendations of tap combinations to learn; no comments
4. “10 Things” (13.21 seconds)
   • Posted Monday, 4/18/22 @ 7:32 pm
   • 1103 plays since posting
   • Short ballet exercise
   • 59 likes since posting
   • PROMOTE: No text except website for last second of video; no comments
5. “Believe You Can” (10.72 seconds)
   • Posted Friday, 4/22/22 @ 8:37 pm (That’s last night! It’s now Saturday morning.)
   • 1082 plays since posting
   • Short tap combo
   • INSPIRE: Text on screen for entire video, encouraging others to believe in themselves; 6 comments so far (including my responses); I should note that this post got some spam/negative comments (which I reply to because I absolutely don’t care when rude, horrible, loser humans comment things like laughing faces on my inspirational posts – I LOVE engagement on my posts, that’s just my truth with regard to this matter – It’s only business, never personal!)

Given all of the above information, I am personally most interested in VIDEO LENGTH and POSTING TIME. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that this may have the greatest impact on how my videos perform.

You can see that a few themes/content pillars emerge:

• EDUCATE, ENGAGE, PROMOTE, INSPIRE

Also, ALL of these top performing videos over the past 5 days have been under 15 seconds, with an average length of 10 seconds.

All of these top-performing videos over the past 5 days have been posted after 7:00 pm, with an average posting time of just before 9:00 pm (which I have realized is probably the latest I should commit to posting, as I often doze off before 10:00 pm, and I don’t want my data to be ruined due to my physical limitations.)

I should also state that some of these videos took over 24 hours (if memory serves me correctly, as I am not watching THAT closely) to get over 1,000 views, while others definitely (including one that I posted last night around 8:30 pm) hit over 1,000 views in less than 12 hours.

I want to note that even though I have chosen to focus on the BEST performing videos of all time on my TikTok account, which have been dance videos, I have had several “behind the scenes” videos, showing my partner cutting our dance boards do fairly well. I am interested in making more videos like this in the future. Also, I genuinely like creating and posting short behind the scenes videos of me and Jeff out doing things with each other and with friends. Finally, I like doing the trending dances (not just using the music for them) and voice overs. So these 4 categories will be re-introduced to my account over time in a strategic way. However, I am focusing on dance videos for the 45 days. Still, I plan to begin posting a bit of the above, mixing it into the work I’ll batch record at the beginning of each week.

Next week, I plan to jumping into posting 4 times per day, to increase my growth in all areas (follower count, video views, engagement, videos pushed to the For You Page, etc.). In order to do this, I intend to batch record at least 28 (and I’ll likely go to 30 or 32 to leave room for error) videos over 2 days at the beginning of next week and feed them out over the following 7 days.

REFLECTION:

A challenge I’m having is keeping track of my tap dance videos, as I do not record them in one take and there is not a way (that I know of) to title the videos in my phone. I record in my phone and not in TikTok, as TikTok does not allow you to keep the original sound when you record in the app. (It would make my life SO much easier of they allowed this. I wouldn’t keep any videos in my phone in this case, and it would really help me to be better organized because I would no longer have to go back and try to figure out which tap sounds were intended for which audio.)

I’m a bit afraid to dive into posting 4 times per day. The 3 times per day honestly feels manageable to me, especially since I get the first video posted while I’m still laying in bed. Two posts in the evening, between 6:00 pm and 10:00 pm has been do-able as well. But, in aiming for prime times (and also not much later than 9:30 pm so that I can rest), I suppose I’ll be planning to post around approximately 6:00 am, 6:00 pm, 7:00 pm, and 9:00 pm each day next week. We will see how it goes!

More later!

Follow my growth on the Dance Daze Dance Boards TikTok account: https://tiktok.com/@dancedazedanceboards