TikTok analytics: a guide for marketers

While TikTok seems to be a platform primarily for social interaction and short-form video content, it offers plenty of value for brands and businesses. With TikTok analytics, you can see how many of the 1 billion TikTok users are engaging with your content, where your followers are located and when they’re most active. These insights—and others— can help you craft content that connects with younger demographics and expands your reach.

As with any digital platform, you need to have clear insight into whether your efforts are paying off. That’s why it’s important to know how to access and understand your TikTok analytics.

How to view TikTok analytics

When Instagram first launched built-in analytics on their platform, you could only access it by switching over to an Instagram business profile.

TikTok, however, is different. A user will have access to the analytics feature once a video is uploaded. Business users can also switch to a TikTok Business account to gain access to more features.

How to switch to a TikTok Business account

Here’s a quick step-by-step on how to easily switch over to a TikTok Business account.

Tap on the profile icon in the bottom right corner.
Click the three vertical lines in the top right corner to access the Settings and privacy area.
Tap Manage account.
Tap Switch to Business Account.
Read the prompt and select Next.
Choose a category that describes your account.

How to check TikTok analytics

You can check your TikTok analytics if you posted a video on the platform. The analytics feature can be accessed from both mobile and desktop devices.

On mobile:

If you’re on the app, tap the TikTok profile icon on the bottom right-hand corner. This will take you to your profile page, from there tap the three vertical lines in the top right corner and then tap Creator Tools and finally Analytics.

On desktop:

Log in to your account by going to TikTok.com, hover over your profile icon, then select View Analytics or just go to tiktok.com/analytics if you are already logged in.

If you’re on a business account and on the TikTok homepage you can hover over your profile icon and select Business Suite.

This will take you directly to the Analytics section of your account.

Main TikTok Analytics sections

TikTok has four primary analytics sections: overview, content, followers and LIVE. Within each of those categories are sub-categories of analytics.

TikTok account overview analytics

Video views

This area shows you a bar graph of how many views your videos have received in the last 7 days. You can also view video performance for the last 28 days, or 60 days or you can also set a custom date range to get an even better understanding of your growth, and any fluctuations or trends.

Profile views

This section reveals the number of profile views you’ve had over your desired date range (last 7, last 28, last 60 days or a custom date range) which can help you identify the type of content that’s driving people to your profile.

The overview tab also shows you:

The number of likes, comments and shares for each video
The number of comments you’ve received
The number of videos you’ve shared

TikTok follower analytics

Speaking of your audience, the third tab in your TikTok analytics is all about your follower stats. Seeing exact followers on TikTok and in-depth information about audience demographics is always helpful to ensure your content is resonating with your target audience and supporting follower growth.

Followers

This area tells you the total number of accounts that follow you along with your net followers. Net followers show the number of new follows minus the number of unfollows in the last 7 days.

Growth rate

This tells you the number of followers you gained or dropped against the previous date range.

Gender

A basic pie chart showcases the percentage of your followers by gender. Make sure this matches up with your target demographics or you may need to rethink your content strategy.

Top territories

In this section, you’ll see the distribution of your followers by territory.

Follower activity

Here, you can get an idea of the most popular times and days that your audience is online.

Hours: this analytics data shows you when your followers are most active on TikTok. (Ideally, you’ll want to post your content before daily user activity peaks).
Days: here you can see which days of the week your followers are most active.

Using this information strategically can help you determine the best times to post on TikTok to reach the most followers. Pay attention to the tallest bars in the graph to see when most of your followers are online, then base your TikTok posting schedule around that.

TikTok content analytics

The next tab in your analytics is the content tab, showing you more specific information about the actual TikToks you’re sharing, including your most viewed video on TikTok.

Video posts

This is where you’ll see views at a glance for the last 9 videos that you posted in the last 7 days. You’ll also get a glimpse into whether you stayed on par with your post frequency from the previous period, or if you posted more or less content.

Video views by section

In this section, you’re able to see how people found your video, whether it was from your profile or if it appeared on their For You feed.

Video views by region

This section gives you insight into the region your video reached and where viewers are from so that you can see exactly where your content performs best.

Average watch time

This is the average length of time people watched your videos – a good indicator of whether your videos are engaging to audiences. You can also see how often users stayed until the end and watched your entire video.

Total play time

This is the cumulative watch time for all users who viewed your video, a helpful metric for comparing the performance of your videos.

The content tab also shows you some of the same information you can see in the overview – total likes, comments and shares, for example.

TikTok LIVE analytics

If you’ve hosted live videos in the past month or week, in this section you’ll be able to see insights such as:

Total views: the number of viewers for your live videos within your selected date range.
Total time: the time you’ve spent hosting live videos within your selected date range.
New followers: TikTok users who began following you while you were hosting a live video within your selected date range.
Top viewer count: the highest number of live video viewers at one specific time within your selected date range.
Unique viewers: Viewers who watched your live video at least once (even if a viewer replays your video, they are counted only once).
Diamonds: Virtual gifts that users may send you—you can exchange these for money through TikTok.

How to use TikTok analytics insights to expand your reach

TikTok gives businesses the insights they need to expand their following. With each video you share, you can review analytics to see whether it’s performing as you expected—and if it’s not, you can adjust your content strategy.

TikTok follower analytics help you determine:

Content topics
Best times to post
Follower engagement
Who your potential influencers are
Whether your efforts are paying off

Use TikTok analytics to grow your business

Now that you know how to navigate TikTok’s analytics dashboard, you’ll need to make sure you’re keeping an eye on the rest of your social media applications as well. It can be challenging and time-consuming to combine data from multiple native analytics reports across every social platform. That’s where you can use a tool like Sprout Social to keep track of data coming from other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube all in one place.

Short-form video continues to rise in popularity and redefine trends. Keep up with what consumers most want out of social content by downloading the Sprout Social Index™, Edition XVII: Accelerate.

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