You’ve just started your Twitter account for your brand new visual novel. You’re excited to finally reveal the big project you’ve been working on. You spend an hour coming up with the perfect tweet… only for it to get absolutely no attention whatsoever.
One of the biggest pitfalls of social media is that you need followers for your post to get attention, but you need interesting posts to get followers. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario.
Wouldn’t it great if there was a social media platform that could push out your posts to people, even if you had no followers? How great would it be if you could go viral while having 10 followers?
Well, let me introduce you to…
✨TikTok✨
First of all, let me introduce myself.
Hi! I’m Gabby, and I’m the lead developer at Two and a Half Studios, and a great believer in the power of TikTok for marketing your visual novels. You can check out my own TikTok here, and my games here and here.
What is TikTok and why should I use it?
TikTok is primarily a video-sharing app which allows users to create short-form content on any topic you can think of. With it’s robust in app video editing features, you can add music and sound effects, voice overs, filters, stickers and much more.
While you would mostly use your mobile to access TikTok, you can also browse and post videos from your computer. However, I would suggest doing this on mobile to access their caption/text and editing features.
TikTok is a fantastic platform for showcasing visuals, which visual novels absolutely do not lack in. Over the last couple of years, TikTok has grown into a global sensation with over 1 billion monthly active users. There’s a huge audience of people here for your game, if you can tap into it.
Tiktok’s algorithm is designed to personalize the content feed for each user based on what they interact with the most. Unlike other social media platforms, TikTok doesn’t rely heavily on follower count to determine visibility. Instead, it prioritizes on how much engagement and view time your video gets.
Every video you make will be pushed out to viewers, even if you have no followers. While I’ll talk more on TikTok’s algorithm further in the article, it’s safe to say that it is one of the easier platforms to grow on in recent years.
Understanding TikTok and its audience
While people tend to think of TikTok as an app primarily for teenagers, you may be surprised to hear that around 40% of its users are aged 18 to 24, and another 31% fall into the 25 to 34 age group.
How does TikTok’s algorithm work?
When you post a video, TikTok analyses it using natural language processing, and uses the extracted information to understand what your post is about. From here, your video will be boosted by the algorithm and sent out to a small handful of people’s For You Pages (FYP from here on out!).
Depending on how people interact with your video in the initial sample set, it will then get pushed out to another, larger group of people—you can see how, with the right video, this could spiral into hundreds of thousands (or more!) views.
What is the For You Page?
The FYP is a curated, endless stream of videos that TikTok thinks you’ll like. Mostly you’ll find people you don’t follow there, which is what makes the platform so good for growth.
The FYP is powered by it’s recommendation system algorithm, which delivers videos based on a big range of factors, including videos similar to ones you’ve interacted with in the past. This means that, likely, the people who see your video are already interested in similar games or topics.
What statistics matter most for TikTok videos?
Creating compelling video content
The first thing I’d like to recommend, and this goes for any platform, is that being a consumer yourself will help you understand what works on TikTok. Before you start posting, spend a week curating your FYP to videos that interest you. This doesn’t need to be other visual novels, or even games at all.
While watching, try to take note of what hooked you in each video. Video hooks can be quite universal, and you’ll be able to learn what works even from unrelated videos.
Follow other indie devs, no matter the genre, and watch how they present their games.
1. Storytelling content and video hooks
I start the video with what’s the greatest feature in my game? Straight away, people are curious about what it could be. We string them along with a few guesses that are incorrect, further leaving people wanting to know what the greatest feature is… only to end it by saying the game is now out!
In this video, I use a currently trending meme/template (which I’ll talk about below!) to tease a game I’ve released that’s from the point of view of a villain. Since the template is already popular, people basically know what to expect and stick around to see more about what this game is.
- In this indie game, you…
- I just realized that…
- Please don’t make the same mistake I did…
- Here’s three reasons you should play my game…
- How I quit my job to make games…
- Don’t you hate it when…
- Am I the only one that…
- This is your sign to…
- Let me tell you about the time I…
- Unpopular opinion, but…
- Behind the scenes of…
- Why is nobody talking about…
- Here’s my experience…
- Make a game with me in 30 seconds…
- This is a reminder to…
2. Recording your screen is okay (and good!)
Most TikTok users are USED to seeing videos where you record your computer screen with your mobile. It doesn’t feel like it SHOULD work, but it does!
This video took me roughly five minutes to record. In it, I crudely record my screen with my phone in time to a (at the time) trending sound. The caption here leans into the song, and people keep watching because the visuals grab them instantly. This lead to over 240,000 views and $1000 in game sales.
3. Work out your unique selling point
Spend some time working out your unique selling points, and get used to being able to explain them quickly and succinctly.
On my newly released game, The Divine Speaker: The Sun and the Moon, I knew two of my unique selling points instantly. 1) There is a dog boy, and yes you can romance him 2) You play as a villain for half of the game.
Using these unique selling points, it was easy to come up with both some informative and some funny videos to create:
4. Create every video as if no one has heard of your game before
Most of your viewers are going to come from the FYP, rather than people that follow you. Every single one of your videos should provide all the context you need to (basically) understand what’s going on.
That doesn’t mean you can’t create memes or inside jokes—just that the way you describe your game should be general enough that it leaves people interested even if they haven’t played or heard of your game before.
Also, it’s okay to keep introducing your game! You don’t need to, in particular, build off your last video on TikTok. New people will see each video, so if something works, you can keep creating similar content.
5. Memes, trends, or serious videos?
You should always have a range of different videos on your TikTok. I personally have divided my video types up into three categories.
You can divide up your categories however works for you, or not at all. For me, dividing them up helps me to track my best performing videos, and what I should focus on in the future.
Firstly, we have explanational videos. This is your pure storytelling content, like the below:
In it, I show five characters you CAN’T date in my games. Showing something that’s a little more “negative” can lead to higher engagement. Every comment saying “THIS IS A CRIME MAKE THEM DATEABLE” helps your visiblity!
The next type of video is “funny” or “trending” sound. This is where you take a trending song or audio clip and set your video to it. Rather than the audio being secondary to the visuals, your visuals must complement the audio.
This is a short video made with only a few images, and yet lead to over 65,000 views. It used a currently trending sound and theme.
The reason trending audio is so good is that videos with trending audio are pushed out to more people—if a viewer engages with a TikTok with a certain song, then they’ll hear more that have the same song.
Lastly, we have CapCut edits. CapCut is an easy-to-use video editing app for mobile that has a lot of functionality with TikTok, as both are owned by the same parent company. You can do much more extensive editing using it (though I recommend making text IN TikTok), and also make use of trending templates.
You’ll know a video is using a template from CapCut if it has a little button that says “Capcut – Try this template” on it. CapCut templates are usually a lot more low effort than other posts, but that doesn’t mean they can’t blow up.
The video on the right is one I created for the Cats on a Lilypad Studios account. It reuses an old video I recorded for another TikTok and a trending CapCut template… which lead to over 250,000 views and thousands of followers.
6. Create in bulk and use the favorites feature
Before you post your first video, create a backlog of at least one week worth of videos. Consistency is key on TikTok, and some people say you get a boost with your first few videos (which I believe!).
After that, my content plan has me create seven TikToks every Monday, giving me enough content for the next week. I currently post one video a day. This is a workload that I find manageable, but some people say it’s better to post two videos a day. It’s really up to you how much you can fit into your dev schedule.
Be flexible with your marketing campaign on TikTok, and be ready to jump on trends while they’re fresh. Even if you create a weeks worth of content, if something blows up, be ready to create a video quickly to get on that hype train.
Also, you should get familiar with the favorites feature that TikTok has. If you see a video that inspires you while consuming content on the platform, favorite it! When you get to your “TikTok creation day”, go back through the videos that inspired you and see if you can make something similar. You can also favorite specific sounds, rather than the whole video, if there’s audio you want to come back to.
My favorites tab is filled with videos that I found entertaining and I want to replicate in some way.
7. “Corporate voice” or how to be more personal
You should decide your company “voice” before you make your first video—but keep in mind that a light and humorous tone is what seems to work best on the platform. Even though Two and a Half Studios is a company of more than one person, I always refer to games as “my game”, and sometimes my characters as “my OCs”.
This is because TikTok favors a personal voice over a corporate one. If your videos all look like ads, they will most of the time be treated like one.
8. Asking questions, calls to action and video replies
Asking a question in your video is a good way to get people to interact—even if their responses don’t make a difference.
In this video, I showed the three love interests from my new game, Dreambound. All three are already getting character routes, but I presented it like it wasn’t decided which one would be a love interest yet.
This lead to a lot of people commenting which one they thought they should be able to romance… even though it was already decided. Letting people feel like they’re making a difference to your game and dev process drives engagement.
Calls to action at the start of videos tends to do less well than putting it at the end. Introduce your game, or a feature of it, then at the end tell people where they can find out more.
Lastly, video replies!
If you have a popular video, you can ride on the attention it’s getting by replying to a comment on the original TikTok with a new video. The videos will boost each other—when the original video gets views, people will see your new video in the replies. When your new video hits the FYP, people will curiously click into what it was a response to, and see your old video. It’s a win-win!
In this old video, I simply replied to someone asking where they could download the demo to one of my games with a quick recording of my screen, and it got over 35,000 views for no effort whatsoever.
Hashtags and things not to do
What hashtags should I use?
There’s no exact science to how many hashtags and which ones are best to use for your videos. You can use sites like this one to find related hashtags, and see how many videos/views each has. For example, if you put in #indiegame:
But in actuality, it’s probably better to use a mix of general hashtags (#indiegame, #anime, etc.) and more niche hashtags that relate to your project.
People like Rachel Pederson recommend a 3×3 hashtag strategy. She suggests finding hashtags to do with “who you serve”, “what you offer”, and “the pain points”. You can find her video on this here.
Others suggest using two niche hashtags and two trending ones. The niche hashtags help TikTok to figure out WHO to push the videos to, and the trendings ons help to hit even more viewers.
Once again, I suggest seeing what other people use, and experimenting yourself with what works. I also suggest using at least 4 hashtags, and not more than 8.
What shouldn’t I do on TikTok?
- If a video doesn’t do well, don’t delete it. Some people say this can lead to shadowbanning. If you really don’t want a video to be seen anymore, set it to friends only or private.
- You shouldn’t post NSFW content. While you CAN skirt around the edges a little bit with angling, you will probably just have your video deleted and your account flagged. You can say it’s an adult or 18+ game, but don’t show anything you wouldn’t want your mother seeing.
- Don’t buy followers or engagement. You want to foster a real community filled with actual viewers, which will lead to more sales and wishlists for your game.
- Don’t ignore comments! Reply to people when you get the chance to help boost engagement on your videos even further.
- You shouldn’t neglect consistency. While you can take a break occasionally, not posting for a long period of time is very harmful for engagement.
- Don’t disregard the analytics that TikTok offers. You can learn a lot of good information about your audience, how your content is performing, your engagement metrics, and where people are dropping off watching your video through it.
Further reading
Below you’ll find a few places for further reading, including success stories from fellow game developers.
TikTok: The gaming marketer’s ultimate guide to TikTok content
How to market a game: How to go viral on TikTok