Not sure how to dive into TikTok analytics and not drown? Here’s an essential guide to using TikTok analytics to know how people are engaging with your content, improve your performance, and move more confidently towards hitting your business goals.
- What is TikTok analytics?
- Why TikTok analytics is important?
- How to check analytics on TikTok
- 28 key metrics to track on TikTok
- 4 best TikTok analytics tools for 2024
- How to use TikTok analytics to boost performance
- Ready to track your TikTok moves?
- TikTok Analytics FAQs
- How to turn off analytics on TikTok
- What’s the most important metric to track on TikTok?
TikTok management tool for teams
Schedule your TikToks, manage TikTok comments (organic and ads), and analyze your performance – from one place – with a simple tool designed for teams.
What is TikTok analytics?
As with every social media channel and every marketing channel, your performance on TikTok can and should be measured if you want TikTok to consistently benefit your business. And that’s precisely what TikTok analytics tools are for.
They’ll show you what kind of people engage with your content, what type of content works best, and other metrics to track if you want to improve your video performance.
That’s just in a nutshell, we’ll look at more details in a second, including what metrics to track and how to do it right. But first things first.
Why TikTok analytics is important?
Gain access to audience insights
Audience insights on TikTok provide a deep understanding of your viewers’ age, gender, location, and active hours. You can use that information to tailor your content to their preferences and make your audience interact with it more, which will maximize engagement under your posts.
Inspect the performance of your content
TikTok analytics enables you to see which videos resonate most with your audience and why. You can analyze metrics such as views, likes, shares, comments, and watch time. These metrics reflect the performance of your social media strategy – you can use that information, learn from it, and improve your content.
Measure ROI for campaigns
Measuring the return on investment (ROI) for TikTok campaigns is essential for determining how effective your content and ad spend are in achieving your business objectives. TikTok provides multiple metrics (for instance brand awareness, conversions, or customer engagement) that can help evaluate the impact of campaigns, allowing you to optimize strategies and justify investments.
Jump on trends
TikTok trends are among the most important factors to consider in your strategy on this platform. Trends can basically make your content go from zero to hero overnight – if you jump on them early enough 😉 Since trends constantly change, evolve, or go back from the dead (yes, trends tend to re-emerge after some time), it is fundamental that you know what’s currently trending on TikTok.
To do that, you can check out our regularly updated article about TikTok trends, or visit TikTok’s Creative Center – where they provide information about trending hashtags and songs.
How to check analytics on TikTok
You basically have two main ways of checking your TikTok analytics.
1. The native TikTok analytics
You’ll find it in your TikTok account. You’ll need a TikTok business account to track all kinds of metrics like, for example, conversions from your TikTok account (think, for example, people clicking your website link from your TikTok profile).
To switch to a business account, go to the Settings and Privacy tab and tap Manage account. Under Account control, choose Switch to Business Account.
Once you do that, you can access all your TikTok analytics on mobile and desktop.
On your desktop, go to https://www.tiktok.com/tiktokstudio/analytics (make sure you’re logged in.) You’ll see TikTok analytics organized into four tabs: Overview, Content, Viewers, and Followers.
They’ll show you things like:
- video views
- profile views
- your top-performing posts
- the number of people who viewed your posts in a selected time period and when they were most active
- traffic sources to your content (for example, the percentage of TikTok users finding you via their FYPs)
- and a breakdown of your followers, including their gender and location.
On mobile, you also have two options. One is to go to TikTok Studio in your profile menu (the three lines in the top right corner) and tap View all to see all TikTok analytics, including for TikTok LIVE.
From the profile menu, you can also get there via Business Suite > Analytics. This will also show you a host of business-related analytics, including:
- Conversions (website clicks, phone number clicks, etc.)
- Product link clicks
- New and lost followers
- And more
2. TikTok analytics tools like NapoleonCat.
Let’s take a closer look at it:
Essentially, you’ll see all the key metrics on TikTok but organized slightly differently – more consistent with other social media analytics that you can also find in NapoleonCat (for example, Instagram and Facebook.)
Apart from the overview with key metrics such as followers, video views, and comments, you’ll have access to the following tabs:
- Reach, which includes detailed information on your followers’ geographical location
- Engagement, including average watch time and comments
- Content, with the most engaging content listed
- Video, with detailed video statistics including how people find your content (e.g., from search or your profile)
You can test NapoleonCat completely for free here – no credit card required during signup 😉
TikTok management tool for teams
Schedule your TikToks, manage TikTok comments (organic and ads), and analyze your performance – from one place – with a simple tool designed for teams.
28 key metrics to track on TikTok
So, you now know where to go to check your TikTok analytics. But what metrics should you track on TikTok? Here are some of the metrics that should definitely be on your list, depending on your marketing and business goals.
(And if you like round numbers – sorry! 😬)
TikTok follower metrics
- Follower count. The total number of followers your account has at the moment. This is obviously something you can also check by going to your TikTok profile (or so says my 10-year-old. I mean, why would you write a 2k-word article about it? ;))
- Follower growth over time. How your following grows over a selected period (for example, a month or a quarter.) If you have specific plans for growing your TikTok audience, that’s definitely one to watch.
- Net new followers. The number of new followers but taking into account the number of unfollows on your account (which you’ll inevitably get, sometimes slowing down your following growth.)
- Location. Where in the world your followers are from by country. TikTok’s algorithm likes to rely on location, so if you’re targeting an international audience, it’s definitely helpful to track who and where you’re actually reaching.
- Gender. What the gender distribution looks like among your followers. Mostly important in reference to your target audience and whether it’s made up of mostly men or women.
- Age. Which age groups are most and least common among your followers. You want to be reaching your core audience on TikTok (assuming they’re there), and not just anybody – so monitoring this metric will give you insight into how you’re doing.
- Activity time. When your followers are most active on TikTok, viewing and liking videos. This one’s super helpful for establishing the best time to post your videos and get best results. Timing is a big one when it comes to reaching the right audience on TikTok.
TikTok account metrics (overall)
- Video views. The overall number of views of your TikTok content over a selected period of time.
- Video likes. The overall number of likes on your content over a selected period of time.
- Average engagement rate. What your engagement is on your posts on average, calculated as number of likes, comments and shares divided by the number of views, then multiplied by 100.
- Average time watched. The average time people spend watching your videos every day. Even the people who do watch your videos might not watch them from start to finish – and knowing when they drop off might help you improve your content so that it’s better at keeping the viewers’ attention.
- Total time spent watching videos. The total time people spent watching all your videos over a selected period.
- Daily comments. How many comments your content gets in a day. Don’t forget that TikTok is about community and conversations, and not just short videos, and comments from your audience are an important indicator of how successful you are at building that community.
- Post shares. How many times people have shared your TikTok videos over a selected period of time. Sharing is also a good indicator of how engaging your content is – it’s much easier to leave a “like” than to actually share someone’s content with your own community.
- Profile views. How many times people have viewed your TikTok profile over a selected period. TikTok will also notify you about profile views as they happen.
TikTok content metrics (for specific videos)
- Post views. The total number of views individual videos have on your profile.
- Post likes. The total number of likes individual videos have on your profile.
- Post comments. The total number of comments under individual videos on your profile.
- Post shares. The number of times people have shared your content on the TikTok app.
- Post engagement rate. The engagement for individual posts.
- Post reach. The number of TikTok accounts your video has reached.
- Top most engaging content. The best-performing TikTok videos in a specific time frame (or overall.)
- Time watched. How long people have watched your individual videos so far.
TikTok LIVE metrics
- Total views. The total number of people who joined your live videos in your selected date range.
- Total time. The total time you hosted live videos for in a selected date range.
- New followers. The number of new followers that followed your account from your live videos.
- Top viewer count. The largest number of people who were watching your live videos at once.
- Unique viewers. The number of users who viewed your live video at least once.
4 best TikTok analytics tools for 2024
I’ve already mentioned a couple, but let me do a really short list below for reference.
1. NapoleonCat
As you’ve already seen above, NapoleonCat will give you all the metrics and stats you need to know to track your TikTok performance and plan your content strategy ahead.
What I didn’t mention, though, is that you get much more than that. Besides TikTok analytics, you also get analytics for other social media platforms, including the ones you manage and other accounts you follow, for example, your competitors. And that’s regardless of the number of accounts you want to track.
Apart from the analytics, you also get a host of other TikTok management tools for business in one subscription, including:
- managing multiple TikTok profiles
- scheduling and auto-publishing your TikToks (and Instagram Reels and Stories, Facebook and LinkedIn posts, and even Google Business updates, just to name a few)
- and moderating TikTok comments, including those that appear under your TikTok ads.
2. Social Insider
Social Insider is a social media analytics and benchmarking platform that includes TikTok analytics, next to a bunch of other social media platforms. It includes all the metrics you need to track performance. It is on the pricier side, though, and solely focused on data and analytics.
3. Brand24
If you’re looking to track other people’s activity on TikTok related to your brand, including mentions of your brand on TikTok, you can use a social listening tool like Brand24. It also searches TikTok for relevant keywords for you, among other social media platforms.
A social listening tool is best matched with a social media analytics tool for complete data coverage.
4. YouScan
YouScan is what Brand24 is, but for visual content, helping you listen (or watch) TikTok and other social media platforms for images instead of keywords, for example, for how and where your logo is used. This is another helpful piece of the TikTok analytics puzzle.
How to use TikTok analytics to boost performance
Yes, we maybe should’ve started by talking about why you should regularly check your TikTok analytics and track your TikTok performance – but let’s use it as a summary for this article.
Because the whole point of checking your TikTok analytics is to get better at marketing on TikTok and creating content – to improve engagement, grow your following, and boost your brand awareness and online presence as a result.
Here are a few ways to do that:
- Have a plan. Don’t just randomly look at numbers. Know what you want to achieve on TikTok – a.k.a. what your goals and KPIs are. Then, check your analytics to find ways to achieve those, see what’s working, what’s not, etc. That’s the only way for it to make sense (apart from going viral, which, apparently, you can’t really plan for.)
- Check your TikTok analytics on a regular basis. Make it a habit to open TikTok analytics in regular time intervals and check the results against your KPIs and benchmarks.
- Pay attention to your follower activity. This will give you invaluable insights into when to post your content so that it reaches your target audience. Timing is important on TikTok, and it can give your content a significant boost in the algorithm.
- Follow other TikTok accounts and their performance. Especially your competitors who serve similar target groups, but also others who might be an inspiration for your content or that you might want to partner with for content creation at some point.
- Watch out for vanity metrics. Likes are cool (who doesn’t like likes?), but what do they change for your brand over time? Don’t fall into the trap of numbers just for numbers sake – look for meaningful metrics that help your business grow and help you make better content on TikTok.
Ready to track your TikTok moves?
Don’t forget to make it a habit and look for meaningful conclusions that help you improve your content and serve your TikTok community better. And if you want TikTok analytics tools all in one place with scheduling and comment moderation, give NapoleonCat a try.
TikTok management tool for teams
Schedule your TikToks, manage TikTok comments (organic and ads), and analyze your performance – from one place – with a simple tool designed for teams.
TikTok Analytics FAQs
How to turn off analytics on TikTok
If you have a business account, TikTok analytics comes with the package, so there’s really no way to turn it off, as it gets turned on the moment you create a Business account on TikTok.
What’s the most important metric to track on TikTok?
There is no one-size-fits-all approach here. A lot will depend on your goals as a business and tracking key metrics that matter for achieving them. Watch out for vanity metrics, as these might sometimes look nice but have little to no meaning when it comes to actual business success.
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