If I started from 0 on TikTok in 2026, this is what I'd do

[0:00]If you want to become a TikTok creator, you're in the right place. There's nothing like turning your passion or your expertise into a full-time income, and TikTok is hands down the fastest way to make it happen. At the same time, it is real easy to get stuck at 200 views and feel discouraged. Especially in this slow burn era on TikTok, where it feels like the algorithm is testing you to see if you're going to stick around even when it's hard. But this video is designed to help you speed up that new creator process. I'm going to walk you through exactly what I would do if I was starting on Tik Tok today, and I have four strategies to share with you. They're simple, practical, and easy to implement so that by the time you finish this video, you'll know exactly what to focus on and how to start applying them right away. Each one of these strategies builds off of each other, and at the end of this video, I'm going to share exactly what you need to do if you're still getting low views, so make sure you stick around to the end. Let's jump into number one. Before you do anything, you need to make sure that your TikTok account settings are dialed in. This helps TikTok figure out who your content is for and who it should be shown to. This is something that I completely messed up when I was first starting on TikTok. I wasn't getting many views, I definitely wasn't getting any followers, and I could not for the life of me figure out why. One of the problems is that I didn't have my account set up properly. I didn't go through these optimization steps that I'm about to show you, and because of that, my views just didn't get much traction. When I started my main account though, I did things the right way, right from the beginning. And the difference was immediate. I started getting views almost from day one. I remember one of my first few videos, probably like one of my first five hit over 10,000 views. I was picking up followers fast, and one of the big reasons is that I optimized my account. And one of the most important things I did was I made sure that my account and my content was not being shown to like my contacts, my family, my friends. And that matters because, let's be honest, like the people that you know in real life, they do not care about whatever topic it is that you're talking about on TikTok. We don't want TikTok testing our videos on people that aren't interested. We only want the algorithm to be learning from the signals that we are intentionally giving it, that way it can show our content to the right people that are interested, that way our videos can break through and get the views and we can get the growth that we want. So, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to take you into the settings. I'm going to put it up on the screen here because my demo phone is dead, and I'm going to walk you through exactly what buttons to push that way you can optimize your account. So, first thing, go to your profile, you're going to hit your menu, and then once you're there in that main menu, you're going to see that gear icon which takes you to the real settings. I want you to click on that. And then I want you to go down to where it says privacy, and you're going to be looking for the section where it says suggest account to others. Now, once you get in there, you want to turn all three of these things off. You don't want it to go to your contacts, you don't want it to go to your Facebook friends, you don't want it to go to your college buddies that you're always sending, you know, memes and videos to. The goal here is to not have your buddies and not have your grandma watching your videos. Now, once you've done that, go back and go to where it says sync your contacts and your Facebook friends. When you click on this one, all of that should be turned off. If it's not, go ahead and turn it off, we want it off. Now, this right here forces the algorithm to go out and find your ideal audience that your videos are actually relevant to, where they're going to be excited to see your videos and learn about whatever it is that you talk about. But we have one more thing that we want to do, and so you're going to back out one more step and you're going to click on account under settings. And when you get here, if you scroll down, you're going to see that it's going to say, it's likely going to say, switch to business account, or it might say switch to personal or switch to creator account. Whatever you have, you want it to say switch to business account. Now, hear me out. You don't want a business account. You want a personal account or that creator account, which is going to allow you to use the trending sounds and do those really helpful videos for growth where you have the commercial sound, you have the short 7-second video with the text on screen. Those are really good for getting reach and getting discovery, but you can't do that if you have a business account because business accounts can't use commercial sounds. Now, I want to give some updated advice about the personal account versus the business account because I used to always say it was a hard line only use the personal account. But we have been experimenting as the algorithm has evolved and it seems to have become less important. And my established clients that are mostly doing like the talking head educational videos, they are having just as much success with a business account, and it allows them to get access to some of the extra features that come with it. But here's what I found. When you're just starting out, the personal account still seems to work better. You still seem to get more views and more distribution and grow faster, and so if you're thinking, oh, I just want to use the business account so I can have the link in my bio right from the beginning, instead of waiting until you get 1,000 followers in the personal account to earn that link in your bio, don't do it. Stick with the personal account, you're not going to get enough views and traffic to get anyone buying from your link when you have don't even have a thousand followers anyway. So, just focus on growth with that personal account, get your link at a thousand, and then when you really are rolling and every video is hitting, if you want to switch to business account then, it's probably going to be okay. Now, we just covered the most important settings that you need to change right away. But I do have this other video that goes way deeper into account optimization if you really want to dial things in. And I'll put that link in the description for you, just make sure that you finish this video before you go watch that one because the next thing I'm about to share is way more important to getting views than your settings are. The settings that we just changed make sure that the algorithm is not testing your videos on the random people in your life, but that's just step one. Step two is making sure that your content is only shown to the people that are going to be really interested in it. And this is where a lot of creators get stuck because they don't realize that they have full control over who their videos are shown to on TikTok. Whether you realize it or not, every video that you post is training the algorithm. And if you're not intentional about what you post and the signals that you feed TikTok, then you're not going to attract the viewers and the audience that you want to build. Here's how I want you to think about it. The TikTok algorithm's entire mission in life is to just make sure that people stay on the platform watching videos for as long as possible. The way it does that is by only showing users videos that they are genuinely interested in watching. But TikTok can't use your content to fill that demand of videos that people are interested in, unless it very clearly understands what your account is about and who it should be showing your content to. That means that you need to make your account very easy to categorize. And the only way that happens is if you niche down. And I know there's a lot of people in your feed that are like, oh, you're the niche and all those kind of things. They're getting it wrong. You do need to have your personality and your perspective and your unique way of doing things because people are going to be attracted to you and who you are. But you still need to be known for something. There still needs to be a focus for your content. Nitching down doesn't mean that you have to be limiting yourself or boxing yourself in, it just means that you have to be very clear and consistent with the focus of your account. Your content should speak to the same type of person dealing with the same problems and obstacles and goals and desires every single video. I want you to think about it like this. When you're starting out, you're like a seed and you're in the ground and you need to be very focused so that way you can split the ground and you can lay roots, and then as your account starts to grow, then you can branch out. But you have to build that authority and you have to become known for something that way people trust you enough to be interested in your opinions on all the other things that you're interested in. But when you're just starting out and you're posting about a bunch of different stuff, Tik Tok has no clue what your account is about and who they can show your videos to. So they're just showing them to random people that end up not being interested, so you don't get the watch time and you don't get distributed past 200 views. But when you consistently talk about one thing, Tik Tok starts to connect the dots and starts to figure out, okay, this is the type of person that I should be showing his videos to, or her videos to. And this isn't just about the algorithm, it's about the people that are actually watching your videos too. People aren't scrolling through TikTok looking for good quality content or valuable content. They're looking for videos that are personally relevant to the things that they're going through and the things that they want to accomplish in their life. That's why being specific wins. When somebody sees your video and they think, hey, that's me, they're more likely to watch longer and engage and come back to watch more videos. Those are the signals that tell TikTok that they found your audience, and then it's going to go out and it's going to find more people like that. When I first started on TikTok, I was not doing this. I was posting about anything and everything that I knew about business because I didn't have a plan and because of that, I just didn't grow as fast as I could have. If I was starting on TikTok today, I would begin by getting crystal clear on what it is that I wanted to sell, and I would make my entire TikTok presence be built around that thing. I would take my course or my coaching offer and I would make sure that every single one of my videos was helping people with the exact same problem that I helped my clients with. And if you don't have a product or service yet, that's totally fine. I just want you to think about this question then. What is it that you want to be known for? That should point to a problem that you help people solve with your videos. For me, that's TikTok growth. I want you to see my videos and one day if you're at a conference and somebody is talking to you about how they're stuck growing on TikTok, that you're going to be like, you got to talk to my guy Mike. You got to go check out his YouTube channel and all of his tutorials. That's what you want for your content. So figure out what you want to be known for, and then once you've figured that out, who is the person that you actually want to help? That ideal viewer and what they need help with should guide every video that you make. And that might be something as simple as like somebody that's a beginner versus somebody that's more advanced. Get clear on who it is that you want to attract because that's going to impact the topics of the videos that you make. Once you've taken the time to figure all that out, written it out on a piece of paper, whatever it is, then the next thing is to just figure out a few content pillars. These are usually going to be the problems or the pain points that that person has, and you usually only need to identify like the top three to four of them. These are going to become the main topics that you're consistently talking about to help your audience. Once you've figured these things out, coming up with ideas becomes easier, your message becomes more clear, and TikTok does a way better job of showing your content to the right people, which means more views. Now this clarity shows TikTok who your account is for, but most creators never send enough signals to the algorithm to actually benefit from it. Looking back, one of the smartest things that I accidentally did was I committed to just posting every single day on TikTok, no matter what kind of views I got. Did I care about the views? Of course I did. I wanted all of my videos to perform really well as quickly as possible. But instead of letting the numbers dictate my mood or my strategy, I focused on the one and only thing that I could actually control, showing up and posting a video every dang day. Building that habit is what leads to results. Views and follower accounts, those are outcomes, and outcomes are completely out of your control. So don't use views or followers as the scoreboard that determines how well you're doing on TikTok. Instead, judge your success on whether you showed up and did the work and actually hit publish today. When you take that approach, a few important things happen. You create more videos, it takes less time, you get more reps, and you learn faster. Over time, your content naturally starts to improve and then the views follow automatically. And now that I understand the platform better, I've realized something else too. Posting consistently over a long period of time directly impacts your reach. TikTok has actually said that they favor creators that show up consistently and they will prioritize your video getting views over other creators that show up like sporadically, post a few videos here or there and then take a week off and then post again. So, your goal is to be the consistent creator that gets that extra little bump, that gets that benefit. So, don't worry about views, focus on consistency. Your goal right now should be to publish 100 videos as fast as you can without missing a day. If you post 100 videos, you're going to learn more about TikTok than most people ever do. And your videos are going to improve just from taking the reps and getting more comfortable on camera. And once that happens, the views are going to follow. But while you're working on posting those first 100 videos, there's one thing that you should really pay attention to. Every once in a while, one of your videos is going to hit. It's going to perform better than the rest. It might not go viral, but it's going to get more views than you normally do. When that happens, don't just move on to the next video idea right away. Take a moment and study that video and try to figure out why it works and let that guide your future videos. The key to growth on TikTok is doubling down on what works. So here are a few ways that you can take those, what I call, outlier videos and use them to grow your views and your audience even faster. First, you can just remake that exact video. Like the exact same idea, script, hook, same everything. Sometimes that second version actually performs better than the first video did. Next, you can just start talking about that topic way more often. We now have proof that your audience is interested in that thing, so don't stop talking about it. You would be surprised how many times I look at accounts that have like no more than 4, 500 views, but they have one video that got 10,000 plus views, and they never made a video like that or about that same topic ever again. It's just mind-boggling to me. And then in addition to making more videos on that topic, you can take that same hook, that same format of the video, and apply it to your other content pillars. You're basically just trying to recognize the patterns of your own growth and repeat them in different ways, that way you can grow more. So, the goal is simple, you want to show up everyday and build the habit of hitting publish, but don't stress out if the views aren't good. And when a video does do well, pay attention and double down on that. That's how you grow an account fast. So, at this point, you might be thinking, okay, I'm doing all of these things, but my views are still low. If that's you, here's two things I want you to focus on. The first thing is this. You need to talk about the same topics so often that you get bored, and then keep talking about them anyway. Even if you're worried that your audience is going to get bored too. There's a few really important reasons for that. The first is the algorithm. TikTok might still need more time to categorize your account. We talked about this at the beginning of the video, but the only way that you're going to get categorized is if you repeatedly talk about the same topics over and over and over again. So sometimes low views don't mean that your content is bad, it just means that TikTok isn't showing your videos to the right people yet. Now, the second reason has nothing to do with the algorithm and everything to do with the people watching your videos. People need to hear the same ideas explained in a bunch of different ways before something clicks. And creating that aha moment is what turns your casual viewers into your die hard fans that watch every single video you post and every single time they see you in their feed. This concept of repeating the same things in different ways really hit home with me recently when I was taking my boys to some hitting lessons for baseball. They have this incredible coach and this is by far the best thing he does. When he sees something wrong with their swing and he wants one of them to make an adjustment, he'll explain it three, four, five, six different ways until something clicks. And then that becomes the cue that he always uses to correct their swing. And what works for my older son doesn't always work for my younger son, and so they have different cues even when he's trying to correct the same problem. And that makes sense because all of our brains work a little bit differently. You want to apply this same thing to your content. When you explain the same ideas and topics in different ways, with different examples, and different stories, and different metaphors, or whatever, you are going to resonate with a bunch of different people, which is going to allow you to attract a much bigger audience with your content. And you're going to create more fans because you're going to create more aha moments. Which leads to the third reason that you should be doing this. You don't know which version of an idea is going to be the one that pops off. You could post a video about the same idea in a dozen different ways and not get any results. But that 13th time, you might explain it just slightly differently, share a different story, frame it in a new way, and all of a sudden the video goes viral. If you only talk about a topic one time, you're severely reducing your chances of finding the version that people actually connect with and getting a viral video. So repetition isn't boring, it's leverage. Now, I said I had two things I want you to try. So the first one, keep talking about the same topic. Second one, go out and do some content research. If you haven't already, go find some other creators in your niche. Click on their profile, scroll through their videos, and try to find some outlier videos, those ones that got way more views than they normally get. Those outliers are clues about what you should be creating content on. It's not just doubling down on your ideas that helps you grow fast. You can shortcut your learning curve by studying what's already working for other creators too. You don't want to copy their videos word for word or anything like that, but you can absolutely use the same hook, the same ideas and go out and make your own version of it. Share your perspective, share your beliefs, share your personality, share your own examples and stories. But now you're starting with proven content, which dramatically increases your chances of getting big views. If you do these two things, if you do the content research and you keep repeating proven ideas even when you're bored, you are going to grow. It's guaranteed. The only way you can fail is if you don't put in the work. And then once you blow up and you're getting the views and you're getting the followers, the next question that you're probably going to be worried about is, how do I make some money with this TikTok thing? So, I want you to watch this video up on the screen next. It's a complete beginner-friendly guide to making money on TikTok, and it'll walk you through exactly how to start earning a living from your content.