Mastering TikTok isn't just about posting videos and sitting back to enjoy the response. It requires diligent assessment of various TikTok metrics to ensure you're aligning your content with your audience and your brand.
Fail to take advantage of TikTok analytics and you're effectively running blind. You might have a couple of successful posts but, in the long term, you will see a dip in engagement.
Every successful account on the platform relies on TikTok content metrics to shape their strategy. From the simple things like views, engagement, and conversions, to more complicated metrics like sentiment analysis – if you want to truly conquer TikTok then you need eyes on all the data.
This guide will walk you through the basics of TikTok analytics so you can understand the essential metrics required to keep your content in check. We'll explore the key performance indicators you need to be aware of and see how you can optimize your processes to create successful content every time.
In this guide, we cover:
Understanding TikTok analytics
Before we dive into individual metrics that you need to follow on TikTok, it’s worth taking a step back and understanding the analytical requirements for the platform. Tracking the performance of each TikTok video is crucial for understanding engagement and virality. Brands and individuals require a firm grasp on analytics in order to get the most out of their TikTok profile.
TikTok has its own analytics dashboard that’s accessible to anyone with a business account.
What is TikTok analytics?
The TikTok analytics dashboard is there to help improve your content, reach your target audience, and grow your profile. There are various native TikTok metrics built into the analytics platform that serve as a guide for all your content.
You get a pretty detailed overview of your content and followers. See which videos are performing the best, when your followers are watching, and how they're responding.
These TikTok insights are fairly standard for social media platforms. It's the same sort of data you can extract from X's or Instagram's in-built data dashboards.
Of course, if you really want to understand your TikTok metrics, then a specific analytics tool – such as Brandwatch – is far more useful. You get in depth data on your entire profile, your audience, your desired audience, and the industry as a whole.
How to access TikTok analytics on the platform
Your engagement metrics are all housed in TikTok’s in-built analytics dashboard. It’s really simple to access, meaning you can monitor how your videos perform in real time.
First, you need a TikTok business account to see your full range of metrics. Click the three lines in the top-right corner of your app, and then tap “Creator Center”. From here you can see all your analytics across various tabs.
If you want analytics for specific video posts, simply jump into your TikTok video and tap the three dots. You’ll then be able to access analytics for the entire video and understand your engagement rate.
Looking at individual videos alongside your wider profile data is the best way to inform your overall strategy. After all, you need insights into everything you do on TikTok.
Importance of tracking TikTok metrics
Indeed, it’s these insights that help TikTokers and brands to transform their content strategy and fully align each video with their audience. Tracking the right TikTok metric is all about optimizing content, so you don’t waste time and resources posting videos that just don’t work.
Key metrics provide the backbone for your strategy moving forward. It’s crucial you track the data and plan how to respond. If video views are high, but there’s no conversion to your shop links, then you need to look at why this is happening. Perhaps your top nine videos all went viral, but you can’t figure out why they worked and others fell flat. Metrics can help you understand.
Key TikTok metrics to follow
Now let's look at the actual metrics that are worth following on the platform. Most of these metrics are available on TikTok's analytics platform, while some need a tool like Brandwatch to decipher.
Most important TikTok metrics
- Engagement rate: This measures the level of engagement your content receives from viewers. It's one of the most important TikTok metrics out there because it gives you an immediate snapshot of what's working well, and what isn't. However, it doesn't tell you why certain videos are working.
- Video views: This is another snapshot metric that is great if you're casually looking over your numbers. It's the total number of times your TikTok videos have been watched.
- Follower growth: TikTok offers a percentage growth metric so you can see the net change in the number of followers over a selected date range. It's useful if your strategy calls for audience growth.
- Profile views: See how many people have visited your TikTok account. Brands need to monitor this particular metric because it shows the level of curiosity users have in your wider company. They might like one video you post and want to know more about the brand behind the content.
- Full video watch rate: Use a tool like Brandwatch to understand deeper analytics, such as full video watch rate. Here, you can see what percentage of your viewers actually stick with your video all the way through.
- Follower demographics: Dive into the details and go beyond basic TikTok follower metrics, by looking at gender splits and user locations with Brandwatch. You can even see which sounds and audio clips your followers are most engaged with.
Video performance metrics
Now we’ve looked at the key metrics for TikTok, it’s time to focus on specific performance metrics around each TikTok video on your account. Start by looking at individual posts before looking at wider metrics that span your entire video collection.
Views and engagement
Individual videos hold the key to simple metrics like views and engagement. You can easily get a figure for the number of people who watch a video and what they subsequently do. Some will “like” the video, some will share it, some will comment. Sharing is, of course, the most valuable engagement metric because it rapidly expands your audience.
A tool like Brandwatch can collate all these standard metrics in one dashboard, so you can compare the good and the bad things about each video.
Top-performing video formats
Then it's time to step back and look at broader data about your content. Use a tool to evaluate different video formats and topics to identify trends in the best performing videos. Why are some videos getting more views and engagement than others?
Analyze these videos to repeat successful formats and look at the under-performing ones to figure out why they're failing.
You might notice something simple like the thumbnail for your best-performing TikTok videos all include a specific image or message. Or it might be more nuanced – perhaps people are sharing popular videos within the first 10 seconds of viewing them. If this is the case, you need to align your content to make it immediately sharable.
Follower and audience metrics
A successful TikTok account is nothing without its audience. Brands are always looking for growth, but there's also an increasing desire to attract engaging followers to your profile. After all, there's nothing better than a loyal follower who also likes to share videos and interact with you.
Below is a quick snapshot of the follower metrics that are worth following, and the types of audience insights you can gather with a tool like Brandwatch.
Follower growth and engagement
These are two TikTok key metrics that have a big influence on your strategy. Follower growth looks at the net change in the number of your followers over a selected date range. It's usually seven days. If you're growing week over week, that's a good sign.
But to truly understand follower growth, you also need to keep an eye on follower engagement. Your engagement effectively monitors what your followers are doing with your videos. If they comment, share, like, etc., then they're engaged.
Engagement and growth are TikTok follower metrics that rely on each other to give you a good sense of your audience. If one is high and the other is low, you need to investigate why.
Audience insights
TikTok's native analytics give you a glimpse into audience demographics, but you'll need third-party software to get a true understanding of your community. The three core insights are:
- Location: Understand where your audience is located. This is found through data mining of peoples' TikTok location settings.
- Gender: Start to understand who is watching your videos and why they are successful across specific gender divides.
- Interests: TikTok users leave a lot of data lying around when they move through the app, and the algorithm quickly understands their individual interests. You can use this data to align your content to your audience's tastes.
- Active times: See when your audience is most active on the platform and align your content to coincide with these times and days of the week.
- Sounds: Viral TikTok content usually comes with a specific soundtrack. You can use a tool to understand what your audience prefers listening to and match it up in your future videos.
Timing and scheduling
TikTok metrics can show when your audience is most active on the app, and when they're most likely to share your posts. This is really important because the algorithm promotes posts that get instant engagement.
If you post a video when your followers are asleep, it might already have bombed by the time they wake up and open the app.
Best time to post on TikTok
So you need to figure out the best time for each TikTok post. You can start with the easy stuff. Figure out where your audience is in the world and make sure you're not posting when they're asleep. After that, dig a little deeper and use analytics software to see when your audience is actually online.
TikTok is most popular in the morning and evening — basically any time users are in bed, on the couch, or on their way to work or school.
Your TikTok marketing strategy might therefore be to post one video in the morning, and a follow-up video in the evening. This way, you develop a regular flow of content that aligns with your audience and have two reliable video types.
You can use a tool like Brandwatch to schedule videos, so you don't need to wake up at 4 am to prepare for a 6:30 am post.
Advanced TikTok analytics
By now, you should have a good understanding of the common metrics associated with any professional TikTok account. Brands and influencers need to stick to the basics in order to maintain consistency and grow their channel.
However, there are also a number of advanced metrics you can use. These are a little more complicated to monitor and decipher — but they're also great if you want to supercharge your TikTok performance.
Live video metrics
TikTok Live isn't as popular as standard videos, mainly because it's hard for users to create on-screen graphics during live sessions. TikTok videos are also stylized to cut out pauses and silence, which you can't do in a live setting.
However, the analytics behind a TikTok video and live videos is still really important. You can get the standard data like views, watch time, and engagement. From there you can dig into deeper TikTok metrics and assess live video revenue, audience demographics, and post-video sentiment.
Live videos can consume a lot of time, money, and energy – so you want to make sure they’re worth it. That’s why advanced analytics for live content is so important.
Trending videos
Brands jump on trends all the time in an effort to stay relevant and get noticed. Sometimes it works, sometimes it looks a little desperate. Being authentic with trending videos is really difficult, but it can be done.
One of the best ways to improve your authenticity is to track analytics around trends. This means looking at the highest-performing videos and understanding where their audience is coming from. It involves looking at trending hashtags. You also need to assess what your competitors are doing, and whether they're joining in with viral content.
By tracking your videos, you can measure spikes in viewership and engagement rate, to see when you were trending. You might notice big peaks around certain times of day, which will help you set an optimal posting time when scheduling future videos.
Retention opportunities
A tool like Brandwatch can identify retention opportunities that you're missing out on. See when and why people are leaving your videos for something else, and figure out a strategy to retain them for longer.
It's hard enough to capture someone's attention and get them to watch your video. So, make sure you do the easy bits of aligning your content to the user so that they stay on and watch for longer.
Our final say on TikTok metrics
Now you understand more about TikTok metrics, it's time to put your knowledge to the test. Our guide is here to take you through the key metrics you need to focus on and make small but simple steps towards improving your TikTok presence.
Start by taking a look at your current profile and see how it aligns with your existing content strategy. Are you getting the results you hoped to achieve? Have you been able to maximize engagement and attract new followers? Is TikTok working for you?
If so, then it's time to take your TikTok marketing plan to the next level and push the boundaries of what your brand is capable of. Set bigger and better targets. It's time to take advantage of your progress to date.
If not, then now's the time to jump into those crucial TikTok metrics and figure out what's going wrong. From basic metrics like follower growth to video views, through to advanced analytics like retention data and follower demographics – you need to cover everything if you're going to realign your TikTok content and meet your strategy aims.
Use the tools at your disposal to identify trends, spot issues with each TikTok post, map out traffic sources, and create content that users will love.
Remember, not everyone can be an influencer. So long as you use metrics to inform your TikTok strategy, you're on the road to success.
