SideShift · creator job board for students
Have 5 creators post twice a day on new TikTok accounts; copy the first hit
10K to 150K+ users in 3-4 months on ~$10K; 16-20M views in one campaign
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- growth (marketplace supply)
- Effort
- ~$10K over ~4 months; two campaigns; 5 creators, ~300 posts in the latest
In their words
Canyon Pergande - The Secret Behind Weirdly Viral Apps
Canyon PergandeSo we uh SideShift we started running kind of this high-volume organic playbook in like late February, so probably like 4 months ago. Um previously to that, we had been, you know, doing just marketing on our own social channels, physically going in person to these college campuses, and I think we were probably around like 10,000 kind of job seekers on our platform. Um so about 10,000 users and
Canyon Pergandeover the past 3 to 4 months have kind of grown that to be now over 150,000 uh active job seekers. And it's largely been in part due to this high-volume organic. It's probably the most cost-effective way, I think, for consumer founders to, you know, market and distribute their product. We've spent probably around 10k across the board, and so you just like run the numbers on that, and like a customer acquisition cost that's, you know, pennies is just ridiculous.
Canyon PergandeAnd so, I think, you know, as we run this playbook more, too, you just get more efficient in it because you start to figure out the formats that work, and you can just replicate that. And obviously, they don't work forever. You know, you need to continue to iterate and experiment. Um, but it's one of those things where, you know, I think we're going to continue to double down. We actually had to turn off our funnels in like mid-May. We only have …
Host300 posts.
Canyon PergandeAcross across the board. We had We had five creators making content, posting, most of them were posting twice a day, and I would say for the first two weeks, I think UGC is one of these things where it like it takes a lot of patience, because it Like some people crack it right away. They find a winning format within like week one of posting. I would say that's not
Canyon Pergandestandard. For us, it took like 2 to 3 weeks, and then as soon as we found one format, we were just doubling down on that. We had all five of our creators pumping it out like every other day, basically. And, you know, it was a 2 million-video view video here, a 5 million-view video here, you know, 100,000 video views that start to stack up, and it's like when one account starts to pick up steam, like it just is really just a flywheel that affects all of the videos.
Canyon Pergande… and their account just gets pushed out into, you know, that audience that you're, you know, inevitably trying to target. And so, I think it's one of those things where founders that, you know, have patience and are willing to go weeks or even months at a time without seeing, you know, extremely extraordinary results, like they get rewarded in the long run because they just continue to experiment and iterate. And so, it's it's one thing that
Canyon Pergandewe, like, a with the companies that we work with try to just like alert them that, look, it doesn't work on the first try every single time. Um, sometimes it takes 300 posts before you find that winning format, but when you do, you know, you're able to just double down on that and and really just change your business, uh, dramatically.
HostCan we see some of the some of the videos from this campaign?
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More from this episode
- Post about the tough job market and slip the app in at the endWinning format; videos at 84K to a few hundred thousand views
- Have creators reply to comments and name the app when people askGuest says comment plugs convert to real users; no numbers
- Visit 25 college campuses in person to sign up the first usersFirst 10-20K users; strong word of mouth among college students
- Tell student creators the gig can grow into a strategist or growth roleGuest says it drives stronger results for brands; no numbers
- Give creators a short brief with a Loom, target persona and proven videosSeen across SideShift customers; long briefs get skipped
- Pay creators a base retainer, $15-20 per video, and big view bonusesCommon rate across SideShift; bonuses get creators working the comments
- Warm up each new TikTok account for 3-5 days, acting like your target user
- Test an app idea with a few creators for 2 weeks before doubling downSeen across studios; two weak 2-week rounds mean rethink the product
- Hire one creator who already went viral on her own TikTok35M views on 46 posts; weekly downloads up 10x
- Let the creator decide what to post instead of sending her ideasFounder's ideas performed terribly; hers drove 35M views
- Post the AI's funniest mistakes, like a photo with a third legDrove heavy engagement; part of a 35M-view run
- Turn the organic TikToks that already worked into paid adsBoth apps in and out of their category's top five for weeks
Tags: tiktok, high-volume-organic, fresh-accounts, winning-format, patience