Practitioner pattern · Canyon Pergande (Co-founder of SideShift, the UGC creator marketplace the case-study apps hire through)
Warm up each new TikTok account for 3-5 days, acting like your target user
What they did
In their words
Canyon Pergande - The Secret Behind Weirdly Viral Apps
Canyon PergandeYeah, so yeah, to kind of chat through the the warmup process, I know everyone kind of has their different views, and I think there's a lot of just unknown. Um, and so I don't think anyone's necessarily right or wrong. There's, you know, different ways to do it that still work. Um, I think how we try and describe it to our creators
Canyon Pergandeis by just saying like put yourself in the shoes of kind of the end-user. Like, if I'm promoting for SideShift, like act as if you're a broke college student that like needs a side hustle and like maybe makes content already or has, you know, done side hustles in the past and just like act as if you're one of those people and just engage with that content consistently. You need You need to act human.
Canyon PergandeLike these algorithms get better every single month. And so, if you just like spam and interact with every single post and just like scroll very quickly, like people can tell that's not just like human behavior, you know? Act as if you're actually scrolling. It's It's definitely very tedious and probably the worst part of this entire process. And so, how we try and frame it to our creators is like, "Look,
Canyon Pergandewe want to have you making content with us for, you know, the next year, potentially. And like the account warmup process kind of lays the foundation for that. And so, do it right the first time so that you ideally don't need to make another account and start over from scratch. And like as you build up this account, like you'll have thousands and thousands of followers, if if done correctly, that you'll gain over the next few months.
Canyon PergandeAnd so, just take the extra, you know, few hours that it takes to warm it up properly." We typically do like a 3- to 5-day warmup. I like to start my creators posting on Mondays. And so, if I onboard a crew on like Wednesday, like maybe the warmup process is a little bit longer. If I onboard them on Friday, maybe it's a little bit shorter. Um, I think that stuff's a little arbitrary. I think if you just maybe take a little bit more time, um, on a shorter like day window,
Canyon Pergandemaybe you spend, you know, an extra hour warming it up, like that's one way to do it. Um, and so I think there's different methodologies for it. A lot of people have like the bottom-up approach. You know, you're sharing, you're commenting, you're liking, you're engaging. Um, but I think just like the bottom line is like you just need to act like a human, um, and act like a human that's in that niche that you're actually promoting. And I think it …
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More from this episode
- Have 5 creators post twice a day on new TikTok accounts; copy the first hit10K to 150K+ users in 3-4 months on ~$10K; 16-20M views in one campaign
- 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
- 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, account-warmup, fresh-accounts, anti-bot