I increased my Spotify follower count by over 20% in a month by posting every day on TikTok. Here is what I learned.

When it comes to music promotion on social media, TikTok has been the go to place for musicians and artists to be heard. With the recent pulling of over 3 million songs by UMG in February, it has never been a better time for smaller and independent artists to promote themselves on the app. For my own experience, I posted every single day on TikTok from January 1st to February 1st and measured my results.

My Goal when posting on TikTok and how to measure success

My goal for growth had to be easily measurable. I wasn’t trying to grow my TikTok account as much as I was trying to grow my Spotify listeners. To do this, I decided my main focus would be to get more followers on Spotify.

To start, on January 1st I had 185 followers, and on February 1st I had increased my follower count to 224. That is a 21% increase of 39 followers! I’ll also mention at the time of writing this (Feb 5th) I am currently sitting at 233 followers total on Spotify (screenshot below).

Here is also a post of my stats from January 1st to February 1st as well.

·       Total post views 26K (an increase of almost 5000%)

·       679 profile views (an increase of 770.5%)

·       1922 likes (an increase of over 38000%)

·       178 comments (and increase of nearly 3500%)

·       19000 unique viewers (and increase of nearly 5000%)

·       57 shares

My process for posting everyday on TikTok and what these numbers mean

While these numbers can tell a story, you will really need a break down of my process to understand what they truly mean. For me, I would post anywhere from 1-4 times a day at varying times (all central) of 8am, 9am, noon. 2pm, 4pm, and 5pm. I picked these times as doing research told me these would be the optimal time to post. While I did see that if I posted outside of these times there was a dip in engagement, overall nothing within these times was typically better than the other.

In order to post every day, I would have to concentrate on content that was easy to create but still within my Niche. For me, all of my songs relate to racing music relevant of Gran Turismo, Forza, and other styles of games from the 90s.

To do this, I concentrated on creating slideshows around car magazine ads from the 80’s and 90’s to play on nostalgia while still being in my niche. I would also only use my own songs for these slideshows to match the vibe and hope that it would take off. Here is an example below:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT87K4DXU/

(TikTok doesn't let you embed slideshows but you get the idea)

Additionally, I also created slide show content highlighting my songs on Spotify and asking to have people check me out. Finally, I would also use free stock footage of car related vids (racing, drifting, etc.) so that I could have plenty of content to choose from.

Initially, while I was confident that the video footage would get the most interaction, it turns out these types of videos got the lowest amount of engagement. With the second amount being the slideshows asking for followers on Spotify and the highest being the slideshows of cars.

Here is what those results looked like based on overall highest engagement average of each video:

·       Highest engaged content showing video of cars: 37 likes, 6 comments, 2 saves, 280 views

·       Highest engaged content of slideshows asking for followers: 32 likes, 4 comments, 10 saves, 436 views

·       Highest engaged content of slideshows showing cars: 134 likes, 0 comments, 24 saves, 1391 views

Should you post every day on TikTok to grow your Spotify following?

Verdict: Yes

Overall, I posted 64 videos between January 1st and February 1st, which comes out to an average of 2 videos per day and roughly 406 views per video. While this may not seem like a lot remember, the goal was to NOT grow my TikTok following, but to instead grow my Spotify following. You're not looking to go viral, you're just looking to grow, and it's almost guaranteed to happen with TikTok if your music is even somewhat decent.

The problem many people face when posting to TikTok is thinking they need a ton of views on a single video to grow. And while this certainly helps, looking at the numbers I was able to generate 26000 views organically with content that wasn’t too time consuming to make. It shows if you're just looking to grow, it's better to simply post ok content then to not post at all.

Your goal shouldn’t be a quick burn to gain followers, it should be consistent measurable processes to see growth of some kind. And while better content ultimately will give you better growth, you CAN and most likely WILL see Spotify growth if you simply stay consistent on the platform. This is especially true if, like me, you’re not looking to get on camera, do trends, create commentary, etc.

Consistency is the game, and I will continue to post every day in order to keep up the growth on my Spotify.

Follow me on my socials for more content

If you would like to follow me for more, feel free to follow me on Spotify, YouTube, or Instagram.