Short-Form Video, Long-Term Impact: How to Become a TikTok Influencer in 7 Steps

TikTok influencers cultivate a dedicated audience by producing and sharing short videos, typically centered around particular niches or trends. They grow a following on the platform by posting lots of TikToks that hit the mark with their audience. By knowing what their viewers want, these creators build a loyal fan base that’s always looking forward to new content.

The best TikTok influencers are usually super creative, fun to watch, and genuine. They might jump on viral challenges, show off their skills, share funny stories, or give useful advice in their area of expertise. Plus, they interact with their fans regularly by responding to comments, going live, and teaming up with other creators. By putting in the work and keeping their audience happy, they become well-known names in the TikTok world.

Why TikTok?

Simply put, TikTok is primed to become the most popular social media platform ever. According to Backlinko, “TikTok isn’t just another social media platform. It’s a juggernaut with 1.12 billion monthly active users, dominating as one of the fastest-growing networks ever. For context: it took Facebook and Instagram nearly a decade to reach that kind of scale. TikTok? It blew past them in record time.”

The platform also has an average session length of 11 minutes, more than doubling the engagement on the other top social media apps, according to Statista. As a result, not monetizing on the platform can feel like leaving money on the table.

TikTok influencers earn income in a few ways:

• TikTok Creator Fund: This is a program that the platform offers to highly visible creators, which allows them to earn money based off of video views.
• Brand sponsorships: Brands collaborate with influencers, who promote products or services in their videos, either for a flat fee or for a percentage of sales generated by the video.
• TikTok Shop: Influencers are able to sell their own products directly to their audience through the TikTok Shop.
• Affiliate marketing: Often using programs like Amazon Associates, influencers can make money by promoting products in their videos that link to their Amazon storefront.
• Live gifts and donations: When an influencer hosts a livestream on their platform, their audience can give them gifts in real time, which can then be converted into money.
• Tips: Influencers often have a Linktree in their bio that links out to their Patreon or other sites, allowing for direct tips and donations from their fans.
• Merch: Super-popular influencers often create their own brands or merchandise that their audience can purchase directly from them.

1. Pick your niche. 

The first step to becoming a TikTok influencer is deciding where your interests and skills intersect. What do you love? What are you good at? What popular niches actually make money and are not already oversaturated? The intersection of these three elements will help you determine your niche.

Once you’ve decided, make sure you can sustain a lot of content within that interest area. If you’re an expert in this subject, it will help you to gain and keep followers—but people often want to join influencers on a journey of discovery, as well, so inexperience is not necessarily a deal breaker. That being said, here’s the most important question to ask yourself: Is this niche sustainable for me as a creator?

2. Create your profile.

The next step is to choose your username—ideally something that fits with the niche you’re working with. Make sure to create a business account so that you are able to monetize. You’ll need a bio, profile photo and video, and a link to your website or Linktree so that your audience knows where to find your products off-platform.

3. Do your market research.

Before you start posting, you’ll want to teach your algorithm what niche you’re in and have it feed you the content you want to take in from other people within that area. Interact with competitor videos and take note of what’s working for them (and what isn’t!).

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4. Make a plan.

It can be tempting to jump right into recording and posting videos, and it’s certainly true that plenty of influencers started out this way. But to really create a business out of being a TikTok influencer, take a more strategic approach. That’s where planning comes in.

Take some time to write down a schedule of the types of content you want to create, make a content calendar that includes your release schedule, and stick to it. More than anything else, success on TikTok relies on consistently posting new videos.

It’s OK to begin with a trial-and-error approach, but only if you’re willing to iterate what works and abandon what doesn’t. Ensure that your content is unique, but don’t forget to take advantage of current trends. Search for popular sounds and build a unique take using that sound. Use trending hashtags in your uploads to make your content more visible and potentially reach new audiences.

5. Engage with your fans.

Interacting with your audience in the comments of your videos is an important way to retain that audience. People flock to TikTok for that kind of engagement.

Another way to engage with your fans is to host a live event where you can speak directly with them. You may find that they start giving you gifts that you can then convert into cash.

6. Seek collaborations.

Once you have a definite niche and a strong following, it’s time to start reaching out to other influencers and brands. You can also look for gigs on our comprehensive content creator casting call database to start earning money and making a name for yourself as a TikTok influencer.

7. Don’t forget the other platforms.

After uploading content onto TikTok, make sure to promote those videos on your other social media platforms.

Everyone’s For You Page (FYP) looks a little different, since we each build our own TikTok homepage brick by brick. But here are some of the most-followed TikTok accounts on the platform today, plus the unique paths they took to success.

1. @khaby.lame
Lame is an Italian-Senegalese creator who has over 162 million followers on TikTok, making him the number one account on the platform since June 2022. He uses the Duet or Stitch features to respond to over-complicated “life hacks” by performing the task in a much simpler manner. He started doing this after he was laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic, and now he boasts a place on both Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list.

2. @charlidamelio
D’Amelio used to hold the most-followed account on TikTok, but she is now number two with over 157 million followers. A competitive dancer before beginning her social media career, she took off on the platform when she began posting dance videos. D’Amelio was the first creator to surpass both 50 million and 100 million followers, making her a pioneer of the TikTok influencer realm. She’s turned her career into an empire of products and projects, including a reality TV show on Hulu, a book, a nail polish line, a makeup line, a clothing line—the list goes on.

3. @lorengray
With an impressive 53 million followers, singer-songwriter Loren Gray joined TikTok back in the early days when it was Musical.ly, posting her music and slowly but surely growing her platform. Today, alongside her financial success from influencer brand sponsorships on TikTok and other social media platforms, she also has an album under her belt, has appeared in multiple music videos, and has even launched her own jewelry brand, &always.

Remember: The beauty of TikTok is that it lets you get more of what you love, feeding content to you based on what you’ve interacted with. And now that there are so many huge influencers—and plenty of middling successes—to learn from, you’ll have your social media empire up and running in no time.