September 2, 2022
Last update
9.2.2022
07 MIN.
Creativity is not enough to achieve your goals. You also need to be smart with your data. Here are 12 TikTok metrics to monitor on a regular basis.
TikTok analytics… What’s all the fuss about?
Lately, you might have noticed more and more brands incorporating TikTok marketing strategies. They upload videos, create challenges, and even launch viral trends.
One such brand is Starbucks, and its viral drinks trend. On its Starbucks Creations page, the company posts videos of the most unique drinks made for its customers, and each of the videos has from 100K to 1 million views:
Starbucks’ content quickly went viral inside and outside of TikTok, as both TikTok influencers and popular YouTubers tried to order or recreate these drinks themselves. And, as we’re approaching the holiday season, Starbucks comes up with new drink ideas, fueling this trend even more.
If you want to try TikTok marketing and do it successfully like Starbucks, you have to make friends with TikTok analytics. And, to evaluate your efforts objectively and find new growth opportunities on this platform, you need to track some important metrics on a regular basis.
Today, we’ll be looking at 12 key metrics in total, broken down into 4 categories – account overview, follower acquisition, follower engagement, and hashtag performance. These numbers represent the current state of your TikTok marketing efforts, your achievements within a particular timeframe, and will help you make your strategy more effective.
We are going to analyze these metrics via Iconosquare’s own tool, Tiklytics, which you also can try for free to measure the performance of not just your TikTok account but other accounts as well.
When monitoring the performance of your TikTok account, the first thing you should take into consideration is the general account overview. It appears right away on the first page of the TikTok analytics tab, as well as your Tiklytics account. There, you can find the following metrics.
Follower count is one of the key performance indicators of your TikTok page. This metric shows the entire number of followers that subscribed to you since you created your account:
This data is updated several times a day, as well as the information on the audience demographics, which you can find in the Analytics Tab on your TikTok account. There, you will be about to find the data on:
In the Analytics Tab, you can also find information on the follower hourly and daily. This data can help you decide when to post on TikTok to make sure that more of your followers see your content.
This metric shows you how many videos you’ve posted within a selected timeframe. But, if you choose the shorter period of time, for instance, 3 months, you will also be able to see how much the activity on your account has increased:
The percentage that you see under the number of posted videos within a selected timeframe represents the consistency of your TikTok activity. Jenna Clarkson, a content creator and editor at TrustMyPaper, notes that ideally, you want this percentage to grow steadily. This would mean that you are consistent with your TikTok marketing strategy and have a strong presence on this platform.
However, keep in mind that this metric only shows the general performance of your videos. We’ll talk about the metrics that break down the data on each of your videos separately a bit later.
In the Overview tab, you can also check the metrics on the average engagement rate per post:
This is an estimated percentage, which is calculated by the total engagement divided by the number of posts within a selected timeframe. In the example above, you can see the average engagement rate for the period of three months and the growth percentage compared to the previous period.
If you have created your TikTok business account within the past 12 months, you can still check the average engagement rate of your content. However, you wouldn’t be able to compare it to the previous activity period:
To get a bigger picture, you can also compare your average engagement rate per post with other influencers on TikTok:
Image credit: Statista
However, note that the average engagement rate per post will differ from country to country.
Other metrics that indicate the overall success of your TikTok marketing strategy are follower evolution and follower evolution percentage.
Follower evolution shows the number of followers that you’ve gained over the past 30 days:
In its turn, the second metric shows the percentage of the total follower evolution over the same period of time:
If both metrics show steady growth, it means that your overall TikTok strategy is successful. But keep in mind that you can only compare it to the previous period of 30 days. So, if you want to compare the results of the total follower evolution over a longer period of time, you should download an .xls table for each month separately.
One of the key goals of every social media marketing strategy is to attract more potential consumers and increase your number of followers. That’s why, besides a more general overlook of your TikTok marketing strategy, you also need metrics describing your general follower acquisition success. Let’s take a look at these metrics and talk more about what they mean.
This metric provides more detailed information on follower growth evolution. You can track data day-by-day to see how many followers you’ve gained during the last month:
This metric can also indicate the viral potential of some of your posts. If your TikTok analytics tool updates follower growth several times a day, a spike in the number of followers after you post a video would mean that you managed to attract the attention of more people, and this type of content works well for follower acquisition.
So, track this metric closely to find out which content might help you go viral, especially if you’re using TikTok for this purpose.
Similar to follower growth history, you can also track average engagement history within a certain period. Here, we selected the timespan of three months:
You can also select a custom timeframe to see the results day-by-day:
Similar to the previous follower growth metrics, average engagement rate history can help you understand which of your TikTok videos bring you more attention. The spikes in the graph indicate that some of your TikToks drove more engagement than usual. Analyzing this data can help you select the best-performing content and boost audience engagement further on.
Now, let’s take a look at the key metrics that you need to monitor to better understand how your audience interacts with your content. We’ll be browsing the metrics that describe your audience’s total as well as video-by-video engagement.
First of all, you might be interested in getting the information on the total likes, comments, shares, and views your TikTok account has received. This is called social data, and it describes all the feedback that TikTok users and social media followers, in general, share on social platforms.
To get the social data that describes your follower engagement in full, select the largest timeframe to see how your content has been performing so far:
However, if you choose a smaller time frame for this data, you will be able to see the engagement rate growth compared to the previous period. Here, we selected the timeframe of three months:
Whether this percentage increases or goes down depends on how consistent you are with your TikTok content strategy. For instance, if, for the past month, you’ve posted fewer videos than within the previous timeframe, you will see your total engagement go down.
Now, let’s talk about more specific follower engagement metrics. In Tiklytics, there is an entire tab full of data that you can monitor to evaluate your engagement rate.
We’ve already mentioned that in the Overview tab, you can see the average engagement rate per post, which is the percentage you get by dividing the total engagement by the number of videos you’ve posted within a chosen timeframe.
In the engagement tab, you can see the total engagement rate for a selected timeframe and analyze it in contrast with the results from the previous period. Here, we’ve selected the timeframe of three months:
Also, you can get the same data on the total number of likes, views, comments, and shares, as well as the average engagement rate per post for each of these metrics:
Another interesting metric that can help you see audience engagement in perspective is the history of the acquisition of likes, shares, comments, and views within a selected timeframe:
You can also monitor each of these metrics in a table mode to see the exact numbers describing audience engagement month-by-month or day-by-day. These metrics can be quite useful to see how your audience responds to your content in general. They can also help you find possible gaps in your TikTok strategy, like choosing an incorrect posting time, which can impact the total engagement.
One of the most valuable metrics, however, are the ones that describe post-by-post engagement. In Tiklytics, you can check out the audience engagement breakdown for every video, including total engagement and the estimated engagement rate:
You can find this information quite useful when developing your further TikTok content strategy. By monitoring, which posts your audience liked the most, you can get ideas for your future videos that will not only boost the engagement of your existing audience but will also help you get more followers on TikTok in general.
To get even more information on which of your videos are currently popular on TikTok, you can also check the app’s Analytics tab, where you can find trending videos as well as the playtime for each of them.
There are also other metrics that you need to monitor to evaluate the success of your TikTok marketing strategy. Hashtag growth is one of them.
Brands, as well as individual TikTok influencers, use hashtags on this platform to draw more attention to their content. Hashtags improve the discoverability of content and even contribute to its virality if you choose them right.
So, let’s take a look at some key metrics that you might need to take into consideration to check and possibly adjust your hashtag strategy to help your TikTok content perform better.
This metric indicates the popularity of a particular hashtag, including some average performance growth hashtags. In Tiklytics, you can check this metric in comparison with other hashtags that you have in mind for your TikTok marketing strategy:
On this comparative table, you can see more general hashtag performance metrics, as well as a breakdown by different average engagement rates.
All this data can provide the basis of your TikTok content strategy and will help you write the content calendar for it, which you can later edit and make changes to using tools like TopEssayWriting and Trello. You can also assign separate hashtags to particular content types, which you want your audience to notice first.
However, keep in mind that these hashtag growth metrics change all the time. Hashtags on TikTok, much like on any other platform, depending on the current trends, which come and go very quickly. So, keep monitoring the hashtag growth metrics regularly.
To have a better understanding of how popular a hashtag is, you can check out the views growth metric – the data that is updated daily and reflects the evolution of hashtag views over the past 30 days:
If you’re trying to choose hashtags for your TikTok content, it’s better to monitor this data in comparison to other hashtags. It will help you spot and take advantage of trendy hashtags faster.
An additional metric that you can take advantage of is tag usage for each hashtag. All hashtags have similar tags connected to them, which you can review and add some of them to your content as well:
When analyzing the list of tags, it is important to also check their hashtag score – a metric that indicates a tag’s popularity. You might find it especially helpful if your goal is to go viral on TikTok.
Just like any other social media platform, TikTok offers a lot of benefits, which you can take advantage to grow your online presence.
However, creativity is not enough to achieve this goal. You also need to be smart with your data and monitor the performance of your TikTok activity on a regular basis.
From the general account overview to follower acquisition, engagement, and even hashtag growth, we’ve shown you the main metrics that you need to check to make sure that your TikTok strategy lives up to your expectation and helps you improve brand awareness.
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