How to Get More Likes on TikTok

A phone with the TikTok symbol behind it with someone hugging lots of Likes.

TikTok has become one of the world’s most influential platforms and a powerful space for brands to grow. Likes are a key metric, signaling content success and helping the algorithm boost visibility. That is why understanding how to get a lot of Likes on TikTok is essential if you want to increase your Likes on TikTok and expand your reach.

In this article, we will highlight 9 proven strategies that will help you get more Likes on TikTok and strengthen your overall presence on the platform.

Why Likes Matter to Your Visibility on TikTok

Likes are an important metric for many creators simply because they act as a positive feedback signal. When users like your video, TikTok interprets this as a sign that the content is engaging and relevant. Videos that receive a high number of Likes relative to their views are more likely to:

  • Be shown to users outside your follower base
  • Gain momentum through repeated For You Page distribution
  • Generate a compounding effect where reach and engagement fuel each other

This increased exposure can lead to higher engagement, faster account growth, and stronger overall performance, making Likes a key driver of success on the platform.

How to Get More Likes on TikTok: 9 Proven Hacks You Need to Try

So, how exactly do you get more Likes on TikTok? The key lies in understanding what works best for you on the platform and applying proven strategies that drive engagement, such as Likes. Below, we will explain 9 proven strategies to help you get more Likes on TikTok:

  1. Identify What Content Performs Best
  2. Benchmark Your Performance Against Competitors
  3. Find the Optimal Time to Post
  4. Use CTAs that generate interaction
  5. Create the perfect opening to capture attention
  6. Implement Hashtag Strategies for Greater Visibility
  7. Collaborate with Other Creators to Grow
  8. Connect with your Community
  9. Optimize the length of your videos
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1. Identify What Content Performs Best

To get more Likes on TikTok, it’s essential to understand which types of content truly resonate with your audience. However, how can you find out why people are actually engaging with and liking your content? 

The answer is with a tagging analysis. This method can be a powerful method that helps you do exactly that by systematically evaluating both your own posts and those of competitors in your niche. With tagging analysis, each post is manually or automatically labeled with specific categories, such as subject, tone, format, or creator presence. This makes it possible to group similar content and directly compare performance across categories. Instead of guessing what works, you can see clear patterns in engagement.

To give a bit more insight into the power of this analysis, we will analyze a group of posts from leading kitchen appliance brands. In this case, we will tag a specific characteristic of their posts in terms of the focus of their content: food, product, person, and technology. This will allow us to explore correlations between the focus of a post and the number of Likes it receives on average.  Below you can see the results of our analysis:

Number of posts’ showing the distribution of post categories.
Number of Likes’ showing total likes by category.

There are a few things to point out about our findings in this example. First, the distribution chart shows a clear imbalance in content strategy:

  • food-related posts dominate the feed by 59.4% of all content
  • product-focused posts made up 34.8%
  • person-led content makes up only 4.3%

Second, this analysis indicates that most brands are heavily invested in visually appealing, recipe-style content. However, the interaction rate chart tells a very different story:

  • Product-focused posts generate by far the highest number of likes, outperforming all other categories by a significant margin.
  • Although product content makes up only around one-third of total posts, it generates a disproportionately high share of Likes.
  • Food content dominates publishing volume but underperforms on likes, indicating diminishing returns from overusing this format.

From a TikTok marketing perspective, this gap highlights a clear optimization opportunity. Brands that rebalance their content mix toward product-driven storytelling, such as demonstrations, feature highlights, or before-and-after results can increase engagement without increasing posting volume. Tagging analysis makes these performance gaps visible, enabling teams to shift from what we usually post to what actually converts attention into Likes.

2. Benchmark Your Performance Against Competitors

If you want to get more Likes on TikTok, it’s important to look beyond how you compare and focus on what competitors are doing that’s working in terms of gaining Likes. This is so you can replicate winning patterns faster. Benchmarking is a key part of this, but it’s even more effective when you combine it with Top Content analysis (ranked by a performance metric such as Likes).

By reviewing competitors with similar audiences, you can identify the creative elements that consistently drive Likes, such as recurring formats, strong hooks, specific topics, video length ranges, editing style, and CTAs. Instead of averaging everything, Top Content highlights the posts that actually break through, making it easier to pinpoint what TikTok users are rewarding right now.

At the same time, benchmarking helps you find strategic gaps: formats or topics that achieve high engagement for others but are underused in your own feed (or across the competitive set). Using both views together, Top Content (what wins) and benchmarking (how often/how consistently it works) you can refine your content mix, double down on proven creative plays, and optimize future posts to drive more Likes.

3. Find the optimal times to post

One of the primary strategies you can implement when you want to gain more Likes on TikTok is to find your best time to post. By the best time to post, we simply mean the days and times when your content is most likely to be Liked by your target audience. 

The reality is that there is no universal time that works for all accounts, as this can vary based on factors such as your industry, the geographic location of your followers, and their consumption habits. However, posting at times that your audience is most likely to Like it can make a real difference in your performance so conducting research of your own target audience’s behavior is important. 

Finding these best times to post on TikTok requires access to historical data and this is where a social media analytics tool becomes especially valuable. These tools let you analyze Likes over different time periods so you can find the days and times when your audience is most likely to Like your content. Moreover if your social media analytics tool allows for unlimited profile tracking, you can leverage historical data both from your own profile as well as your competitors allowing you to better spot timing patterns that lead to higher Like counts.

The graphic below is an example of this analysis. It visualizes when posts were published and the number of Likes they received on average for a particular timeframe. Larger dots indicate times when more content was posted, while greener dots show higher number of Likes. In this case, brands from the kitchen appliance niche, such as KitchenAid and NinjaKitchen, were analyzed.

Best Times To Post Chart

The chart shows that most brands concentrate their posting activity during weekday evenings. These time slots are marked by larger dots, indicating high posting volume. However, many of these dots are red or yellow, suggesting that Likes remain relatively low compared to how much content is published.

In contrast, there are a few smaller but noticeably greener dots at less crowded times, particularly earlier in the day and in select evening slots toward the end of the week (especially Friday). These indicate higher interaction rates despite lower posting activity, meaning fewer posts are competing for attention while the audience is more likely to like content. 

Remember that the best times are not always fixed, as users’ habits may change throughout the year, during seasons or specific events. Constantly tracking changes in your audience’s behavior can help maintain the effectiveness of your strategy. Posting at times with higher interaction rate can improve your reach, but it’s important to remember that quality content and other key metrics and strategies are still critical to maximize the impact of your posts.

 4. Use CTAs that generate interaction

Focusing on perfecting your calls to action (CTAs) can be an effective way to increase Likes on TikTok. That is because, sometimes, a simple reminder can be all your audience needs to interact with your content. 

To apply calls to action effectively, it is important to integrate them naturally into your content. For example, as well as interacting directly with your community by replying to comments or messages, you should aim to keep them wanting more:

  • “If you want to see more content like this, be sure to like this video.”
  • “Double tap if you agree.”
  • “Like this if you want part 2.”
  • “If this video hits X Likes, I’ll post the next step/tutorial.”
  • “Like for more tips like this.”
  • “Which one would you choose? Like option A / comment option B.”

This not only encourages users to click the like button, but it also gives you insight into what type of content resonates most with your audience. 

Additionally, captions can reinforce your CTAs. Placing them at key moments in the video, such as at the end offering a valuable tip or at the key moments of a video, can remind viewers to take action, helping increase interaction and Likes. 

Pro Tip:

Use tagging analysis to track which CTAs generate the most Likes and overall engagement. By comparing different CTA styles across your content, you can identify what resonates best with your audience. This allows you to refine your approach and consistently use CTAs that drive higher interaction on TikTok.

5. Create the perfect opening to capture attention

With millions of videos competing daily on TikTok, capturing the viewer’s attention in the first few seconds represents another important strategy related to how to increase Likes on TikTok. That’s why an impactful start can be the turning point between content that goes unnoticed and content that generates more TikTok Likes.

If you want to capture your audience from the very beginning, start your videos with a strong hook, such as surprising visuals, a curiosity-driven question, or a trending sound. Use the first few seconds to tease what’s coming next, creating anticipation and giving viewers a reason to keep watching. 

The same principle applies to captions: the first line works like a headline and should stop the scroll. Try a bold statement, a surprising fact, or a relatable question, such as:

  • “You’re probably wasting half of your content right now.”
  • “One sentence can double your engagement.”
  • “Ever spent an hour on a post and got three likes?”

When your opening is intriguing, viewers are more likely to watch longer and that increases the chances they’ll engage and leave a Like.

6. Use Hashtag to Increase Visibility

When it comes to looking for ways concerning how to get free Likes on TikTok, getting your content in front of the right audience is one of the most important factors and hashtags play a key role in making that happen. Likes are strongly influenced by relevance: the more your video is shown to users who are genuinely interested in the topic, the higher the chance they will interact with it. Hashtags help categorize your content, making it easier for TikTok to understand what your video is about and who it should be shown to.

Hashtags are especially important for three main reasons:

  • Relevance & discovery: Well-chosen hashtags increase the likelihood that your content appears in topic feeds and searches where users already have interest, which naturally raises the chance of earning Likes.
  • Algorithm signals: Consistent, topic-specific hashtags help TikTok quickly test your content with the right audience. Strong early engagement, especially Likes, can improve further distribution.
  • Repeatable performance insights: By tracking hashtag performance over time, you can identify which hashtags are repeatedly associated with higher Like counts, rather than relying on one-off viral results.

With a social media analytics tool, you can turn this into a data-driven strategy. By analyzing your own posts alongside comparable competitors in your niche, you can see which hashtags consistently correlate with more Likes over longer periods of time. This allows you to move beyond guesswork and build a hashtag strategy that directly supports your goal of learning how to get free Likes on TikTok, without paid promotion.

A banner with graphics for optimizing hashtags on social media and a free trial button.

For example, if you’re a sports brand, your hashtag research should focus on analyzing which keywords appear most often in high-performing posts in terms of Likes. In the graphic, you can see the top 50 hashtags used in your niche. In this chart, the larger words are used more frequently, while greener words indicate hashtags that generate more Likes. Below, you can see the result of such an analysis: 

Top 50 Hashtags with the most numbers of likes

Conducting hashtag research as seen above can help you craft a data-based strategy for your hashtags use. For instance, after running such asn analysis, you may decide that instead of relying only on very large, highly competitive hashtags, focus on medium-sized but greener hashtags such as #winterfashion, #unboxing, or #matchday. Combine these with hashtags that directly describe your content to improve relevance, visibility, and ultimately get more Likes on TikTok.

7. Collaborate with Other Creators to Grow

If you have ever wondered “how can I get more Likes on TikTok” then collaborating with other creators is something to consider. By working with influencers or creators who share similar or complementary audiences, you can expose your content to new potential viewers. This strategy can be especially valuable because it allows you to leverage the trust that followers already have in the creators you collaborate with, and helps you discover how to gain more Likes on TikTok by tapping into new and engaged audiences. Followers of the creators you collaborate with may be more likely to interact with you because they see the collaboration as an implicit recommendation, which can increase credibility and receptivity to your content. In short, it’s a way to validate your profile to a new audience that can bring you new Likes.

The first step in implementing this strategy could be to identify creators whose style and audience align with yours. Look for profiles that share similar values, themes, or content styles to ensure an authentic and natural collaboration. Once you’ve found them, you can propose mutually beneficial content ideas, such as duets, shared challenges, or joint videos that combine the strengths of both creators.

You can use social media tools that offer the ability to connect brands with influencers. For instance, these platforms can help you discover relevant creators and analyze their performance, ensuring that your collaborations are strategic and effective. This approach allows you to spot current trends and plan collaborations that align with your brand’s objectives. Make sure the collaboration flows naturally and authentically, so that both you and the creator can gain exposure without compromising your personal style.

8. Connect with your Community

Creating a strong bond with your community is a good approach for those who want to know how to get more Likes on TikTok after posting a video. If your audience feels connected to you and perceives authenticity in your content, they might be more likely to interact on an ongoing basis. Fostering an authentic and close relationship can make your followers feel more connected to you and, in support of your work, give your videos more Likes. This interaction also sends positive signals to the TikTok algorithm, increasing your visibility and helping you get even more Likes over time.

To achieve this, active community management is essential. Responding quickly and meaningfully to your audience encourages ongoing engagement and long-term support. Here’s what you should do:

  • Reply to comments early, especially within the first hour after posting, to boost engagement.
  • Ask follow-up questions in your replies to keep conversations going.
  • Pin engaging comments that invite others to interact.
  • Turn recurring questions into new videos and tag or mention the commenter.
  • Respond to direct messages to strengthen one-to-one connections.

Responding to all interactions from your community, whether they are comments, direct messages etc., can be a time-consuming task. To make this process easier, you can use community management tools to quickly respond to all the notifications you receive from a single dashboard. If you take the time to respond and interact with your community, your followers are more likely to feel valued and continue to support your content. This can help build a strong, long-term relationship with your audience.

9. Optimize the Length of your Videos

The length of your videos on TikTok can be a key factor that can influence the number of Likes and the level of engagement you receive. While there is no exact formula for the ideal length, exploring and analyzing the performance of your videos and those of others in your industry can offer valuable insights. A good practice is to use a social media analytics tool that allows you to perform detailed analysis to identify a profile’s average video length as well as the average number of Likes. 

Using the graphics as an example, you can see that profiles with higher average Likes also tend to cluster around specific video lengths. Ninja Kitchen, for instance, combines very high Like counts with an average video length of around 20 seconds, while Le Creuset performs well with slightly longer videos. This kind of comparison helps you understand what successful profiles in your industry are doing differently and gives you a realistic range to test, rather than guessing blindly.

Bar chart showing average likes per post by kitchen brand
Bar chart showing average video length by kitchen brand

A practical way to increase Likes is to benchmark against profiles you consider successful:

  • Track their average video length and average Likes
  • Identify the video length range where the strongest performers sit
  • Use this range as a starting benchmark for your own content

From there, you can go deeper. By sorting posts in your niche by number of Likes and reviewing their video lengths, you can see which formats and durations consistently appear among the top-performing content. Many social media analytics tools also allow you to visualize this relationship in a matrix or correlation chart, making it easier to spot patterns and outliers.

It’s important to be clear that this analysis shows correlations, not guarantees. Shorter or longer videos don’t automatically generate Likes on their own. Factors like the hook in the first seconds, storytelling, visuals, and relevance to the audience all play a major role. However, understanding which video lengths tend to perform well in your industry helps you remove friction and avoid working against platform and audience expectations.

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Conclusion: How to have more likes on TikTok

As we have seen, increasing Likes on TikTok is not an impossible task, but it does require a combination of strategy, analysis, and continuous adjustment. In this article, we have seen how applying techniques such as posting at optimal times, using strategic hashtags, and collaborating with other creators can make a big difference in your results. By following these tips and adapting them to your profile, you can improve the interaction and visibility of your videos, and consistently get more Likes.

Now that we have answered the question how do I get more Likes on TikTok,” it’s time to start implementing these techniques and monitor your progress. You can use analytics tools that allow you to evaluate which strategies are working best and adjust your approach to maximize results. If you’re looking for a comprehensive tool to facilitate this process, Fanpage Karma offers a 14-day free trial that includes benchmarking and analytics, community management and content planning features all in one platform.

In addition, Fanpage Karma hosts free webinars every week, where you can learn how to get the most out of the tool and optimize your strategy on TikTok and other social networks. Take advantage of these resources to take your TikTok presence to the next level and start discovering how to increase your Likes on TikTok.

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