Growing Our YouTube Channel with TikTok

A Viral TikTok Helps Us Grow our YouTube Channel

Recently, we created a YouTube channel, DiamondHand Racing Series, to stay ahead of the curve for YouTube and TikTok. It’s been a blast! On our channel, we run Matchbox-style car races on a tricked-out track and chronicle the response. To share what we learn, we’re going to be blogging at key moments. This 3-minute blog gives tips on what we’ve learned thus far on how TikTok and YouTube Shorts help to grow a channel.

In the first week of our TikTok channel, we posted a video that received 322,600 views ORGANICALLY. Ok, we can’t guarantee that we’ll hit the TikTok algorithm every time, but we can point to a number of reasons why TikTok ate it up and served it to so many. Check out the 11-second video.

As background—this channel comes after our success last year when we built a car insurance client’s TikTok channel to 27K subscribers in 6 months with diecast races on a branded track. For this new YouTube channel, our goal is to hit 1,000 YouTube subscribers by December. 1,000 subscribers is the level that channel monetization begins. Important.

Back to our 322,000-view video. You can see above that it shows a BTS shot of Track Imagineer Chad Denning’s arm reaching into the track’s lava pit to retrieve a car. It looks spooky, the GoPro footage made it look raw and the angle made his arm look impossibly large. Weird.

Chad Denning's arm

Chad Denning reaching into the DiamondHand Racing Series lava pit to get a car

TikTok Tips

How did “weird” translate into success? TikTok uses its mathematical formula to decide based on the creative presented which videos will perform the best. In TikTok’s Creative Best Practices playbook, they say that videos are rated for certain creative attributes based on the likelihood that the video will maximize reach or drive conversion. While they don’t give us the formula, we see some best practices:

TIP: As many successful videos do, the video tapped into an existing channel trend. The amazing Gamma Blaster Carley Stone who created the piece knew a standout moment when she saw it. She framed the piece around the trend “Death Doesn’t Scare Me, but something else does…” Carley spends time on TikTok and knows the platform.

TIP: The video used the language of the channel. The first line – “Death Doesn’t Scare Me, but yk What Does?” yk, IYKYK. (If You Know, You Know.) You know.

TIP: The video seems to come from a person, not a brand. Few brands would talk about death in their content and use a real person’s name, Chad, in the headline. Calling out Chad’s name brought forth a bunch of comments such as interest to see Chad smash the track dressed as King Kong!

TIP: Chad and Carley responded to comments immediately and the algorithm loved the interaction. The TikTok algorithm responds positively to high interaction and increases that content’s views.

TIP: And, of course, Carley used the relevant hashtags: #matchbox, #cars, #deathdoesntscareme, and two hashtags that were sponsored trending hashtags, #WorldPrincessWeek and #AEJeansSoundOn.

The good news is that one TikTok translated into 50 new subscribers for our DiamondHand Racing Series YouTube channel. We’re on our way towards monetization!

We’re just getting started with our yearlong experiment. Follow our TikTok channel, subscribe to our YouTube channel and we’ll provide updates on Gamma Blast LinkedIn. We’ll have plenty of results to share.

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