Are Likes As Important As TikTok Followers?

Social media influencers are always looking at metrics to see how their performance is faring. You can’t know whether your content is having the desired impact unless you analyse your numbers, after all. Different social media platforms have different requirements; for example, being ratioed on Twitter may make it look like you have lots of comments, but in reality, your content is proving controversial, which could mean trouble for you.

If you’re on TikTok, there are two main figures that you need to be looking at: your likes and your followers. While view count is also important, likes and followers are the best way to track how successful a video is proving, and whether it’s translating into long-term success for you. One question you may be asking yourself is this: are TikTok likes more important than your follower count? Are they as important as one another, or should you be focusing on one more than the other?

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What are TikTok likes?

The first thing to know is exactly what TikTok likes are. When you post a video, you’ll see a small heart icon. Next to this icon will be a number, and that’s the number of likes the video has received. This number is obviously important because you want videos to get as many likes as possible; this means more people are appreciating your content, which gives you an idea of where you should go with each video.

Okay, what about followers?

TikTok followers are pretty self-explanatory. These are people who like your videos so much that they’ve chosen to follow you, which means they’ll be notified when you upload new content. Obviously, you want to amass as many followers as possible, too; this will tell you how many people are waiting on the next video you upload, and the more of these people there are, the better.

So are TikTok likes as important as followers?

This depends entirely on what you’re aiming to do on TikTok. If you want to build a lasting presence for yourself, then followers are crucial; these are the people who will keep you afloat as a social media influencer. On the other hand, likes can come from people who aren’t followers yet, and if a video gets a lot of likes, that’s a good indication that people are enjoying what you’re doing.

There’s no easy way of determining whether likes or followers are more important on TikTok, unfortunately. That might sound like a cop-out, but there really is no easy answer. If, for example, your account has a lot of followers but no likes, people could become suspicious that you’re mainly depending on bots for your follower count. On the other hand, if you have a lot of likes but no followers, it suggests you’re not able to translate short-term content success into a long-term following, which doesn’t look good for you. It could also make people suspicious that you employed the services of a TikTok bot to simply shower your videos in likes.

When should I try to get more followers?

If you’re an influencer or a brand, then followers are your bread and butter when it comes to TikTok. Without followers, you aren’t really “influencing” anybody; you can’t really call yourself an influencer if you don’t have a dedicated following that will listen to what you’re saying, after all.

You should also be chasing followers if you’re trying to stay on TikTok for the long haul. If you just want to post a few videos and then be done with it, followers aren’t going to be important for you, and if you’re using the platform as a method to explore your creativity, then you don’t need followers. However, if you want to stay relevant in the public eye, then you need to build followers.

When should I look for likes?

The truth is that likes and followers on TikTok have something of a symbiotic relationship. If you have a lot of likes on your videos – or even just on one video – then that will make people want to follow you, because they’ll think you’re a creator worth watching. Similarly, if you have lots of followers, it’s probably because people like your content, so you’re going to get more likes.

However, hitting trends and making videos according to the For You algorithm is a good way of amassing likes. This is more likely to net you likes than followers, because the algorithm will recommend your content to people who may not be following you yet. You should be looking for likes if you aren’t particularly interested in becoming an influencer, but you still want people on TikTok to like what you’re doing and provide positive feedback.

The final word

In summary, if you’re wondering about whether TikTok likes or TikTok followers are more important, the answer is this: they’re both as important as each other. Some have even decried both of these numbers as vanity metrics that don’t accurately reflect what your TikTok presence is really like. While we don’t necessarily agree with this take – there’s a good reason why many TikTok influencers have high counts of both, after all – you can definitely get too bogged down in the details and worry more about your numbers than about making high-quality content. In the end, if you craft good videos, your followers and likes will go up, and both of them will help to build your TikTok profile!

Read more: 13 Trending Ideas To Build More Followers on TikTok