Strategy and how to build a TikTok channel from scratch

HT Vũ Ngọc 12 Mar, 2025 Tiktok Marketing

The topic of making money on TikTok is currently a hot trend, drawing massive attention. Stories of TikTokers earning hundreds of millions, even billions, from content creation have inspired individuals and businesses alike to build their own TikTok channels. However, is monetizing on TikTok as easy as it seems? And how can you build a successful TikTok channel from scratch? Let’s explore the key strategies for developing a successful TikTok channel through real-world case studies!

Things to Consider Before Building a TikTok Channel

TikTok Regulations & Policies

In addition to TikTok’s official guidelines, here are some crucial rules we have gathered from developing large-scale channels:

Content Guidelines

TikTok prioritizes user experience and promotes a safe and positive environment. Therefore, when building your channel, you must strictly avoid posting or live-streaming content related to:

Harassment, bullying, and violence.
Nudity, undergarments, or sexually explicit material.
The safety of minors.
Violations of TikTok’s prohibited content policies.
Illegal activities.
Hate speech, racial or religious discrimination, political opposition, or gender discrimination.
Banned substances, firearms, or restricted products.
Dangerous stunts, such as bridge jumping, high-speed racing, or negative content.
Inappropriate body-related content.
Stimulants and prohibited substances.

Video & Image Quality

As a video-driven platform, TikTok emphasizes high-quality content. To ensure your content aligns with the platform’s standards, keep the following in mind:

Videos must be in full-screen mode and should not contain logos to avoid being flagged as copied content.
Avoid including words like buy, sell, product, exchange for rewards in video descriptions, as these may trigger restrictions on sales-related content.
Do not copy or re-upload existing content.
Ensure authentic, real-life appearances in your videos.
Avoid mentioning other platforms (e.g., YouTube, Shopee, Facebook). Instead, use creative alternatives such as Phở bò (Shopee), sàn S (Shopee), or kênh Y (YouTube).
Minimize the use of logos, branding, and phone numbers in videos and comments.
Avoid including direct links to websites or other media platforms.
Do not use vulgar or offensive language, including sensitive medical terms.
Never encourage likes, shares, or comments to drive sales in any form.
Avoid uploading duplicate content from other sources.

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TikTok Channel Standards

To ensure your channel is highly rated and operates sustainably on the TikTok platform, there are several key factors you should keep in mind:

Video Ratio

TikTok primarily uses a vertical video format with a 9:16 aspect ratio. If you record in landscape mode, remember that the video will not be displayed in full screen. Always aim for high-quality videos and avoid blurriness. Invest in a good phone, microphone, lighting, or even a professional camera if possible.

TikTok Channel Bio

Your bio serves as the first introduction to viewers visiting your channel. Therefore, make sure to clearly convey your message to your followers. Keep in mind that the bio should be concise, with a maximum limit of 80 characters set by TikTok. For business accounts or accounts with over 1,000 followers, you can add a link in your bio to direct users to your other platforms.

Video Titles

Video titles are crucial for informing viewers about your content and helping TikTok categorize your videos effectively. Be sure to use clear and descriptive captions to accurately represent your video’s topic.

Using Hashtags

When posting a video, use relevant hashtags in the description to help viewers find related content. Include hashtags featuring your name, area of expertise, and trending hashtags to increase visibility.

Adding Music

Using music in your videos can enhance engagement. Choose trending sounds to increase recognition and boost virality. However, note that for business accounts, you can only use licensed audio tracks from the Commercial Music Library (CML), which provides approved sounds for commercial use.

Should You Choose a Personal or Business Account?

TikTok offers two types of accounts: Personal Accounts and Business Accounts, each designed to provide the best features based on your goals. Carefully consider the benefits of each type before making a decision.

Who Should Use a TikTok Business Account?

Businesses & Brands: If you represent a business or brand and want to use TikTok as a marketing channel to reach customers, a business account is the ideal choice. Additionally, it allows you to apply for the blue verification tick more easily.
Advertising & Marketing: Business accounts provide advanced advertising and marketing tools to increase views, engagement, and optimize ad campaigns on TikTok.

Who Should Use a TikTok Personal Account?

Content Creators: If you’re an individual creator looking to share creative content, a personal account is the best option, as it doesn’t restrict access to copyrighted content or music.
Social Interaction & Engagement: A personal account allows you to connect with friends, family, and followers more freely by sharing personal and creative videos.

How to Build a Trending TikTok Channel

For TikTok Business Channels

To succeed in selling on TikTok and maintain sustainable growth, you need to plan a solid strategy right from the beginning. This will help you make the right decisions and seize opportunities to build and market your business effectively on the platform.

Sellers should create content that focuses on customer experience. Building trust and loyalty is essential—not just creating eye-catching videos, but also making customers feel special. Engage with your audience actively, be responsive to their questions, provide customer support, and carefully listen to their feedback.

Beyond TikTok Shop, sellers can also expand their business on other e-commerce platforms like Shopee, Lazada, Facebook, and Instagram. Using multiple sales channels will enhance the customer experience and strengthen your brand presence across different platforms.

However, the most crucial factor is measuring and evaluating performance regularly. To ensure your channel is effective, track engagement and customer feedback on videos and products. This allows you to adjust and optimize your strategy to meet customer needs and market trends.

For Personal TikTok Creators

Step-by-Step Guide to Building an Effective TikTok Channel

Unlike a business channel, a personal TikTok channel offers advantages such as:
✅ Diverse content & themes
✅ A personalized, unique style
✅ Creative freedom

So, don’t wait! Set up your personal TikTok account today and start building your own brand!

These four steps were successfully applied to @kienreview90’s TikTok channel, leading to:
🔹 8.5 million followers
🔹 Average video views of 7–10 million
🔹 Consistent appearance on TikTok’s For You Page (FYP)
🔹 Thousands of product sales through review videos, attracting collaboration offers from multiple businesses

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Best Practices for Growing a Personal TikTok Channel

✔️ Have a clear, consistent concept – Avoid switching between too many different content styles and topics.
✔️ Create professional thumbnails – Choose high-quality images, add text, and maintain visual consistency for better recognition.
✔️ Target a specific audience – Develop content that caters to your ideal viewer.
✔️ Post during peak hours – Upload videos when TikTok traffic is at its highest (engagement rates are estimated to double during peak times).
✔️ Be unique and creative – Differentiate yourself and develop a signature style.
✔️ Grab attention in the first 3-5 seconds – Make sure your opening is engaging so viewers don’t scroll past.
✔️ Optimize captions & hashtags – Use 3-5 relevant hashtags per video.
✔️ Create 1-2 branded hashtags – This helps establish your brand identity.
✔️ Choose trending music – Use popular soundtracks that are currently trending on TikTok.
✔️ Prioritize short videos (15-45 sec) – In the early stages, avoid long videos (over 1 min), as they are harder to retain viewer attention.
✔️ Maintain a consistent posting schedule – Aim for one video per day or at least one every three days. Avoid posting too frequently (e.g., 10-20 videos per day) or leaving your channel inactive for long periods.

Mistakes to Avoid When Building a Personal TikTok Channel

Additionally, optimizing key elements when setting up a personal account will help enhance content visibility on TikTok, attract viewers, and create a personal brand. Here are some guidelines to help you optimize and successfully build your TikTok channel from scratch!

Focusing on quantity over quality. A well-invested video is always better than hundreds of low-quality ones.
Copying content from other channels that has already been posted on TikTok. Even if you remove the logo, TikTok’s AI can still detect reused videos and reduce their engagement.
Posting sales-oriented content or directing traffic to other platforms, violating TikTok’s policies (which often leads to reduced reach or even account suspension).
Uploading suggestive or adult content. TikTok now automatically detects such violations, and these videos rarely appear on the trending page.
Inconsistent posting, frequently changing content themes, reducing quality, or spamming videos. If your account experiences these issues, you may need to rebuild your channel from scratch.

Note: Do not immediately start posting content on a newly created channel. Instead, use the first 3–4 weeks to develop a strategy and interact with content related to your niche. This will help TikTok’s algorithm identify your topic more easily and establish credibility and trust for your channel.

Frequent changes to account information (such as name, ID, topic, or deleting old content), especially when purchasing an account for rebuilding, often leads to restricted reach, making further growth difficult.
Producing low-quality, repetitive content without improvement. Around 80–90% of new accounts struggle with this issue.

Notable Creators in Personal TikTok Channel Growth

Building a successful personal TikTok channel requires creativity, effort, and patience. Below are some outstanding content creators who have achieved significant success:

TikToker Bông Tím (@bongtim96)

Currently has 6.2 million followers and 214 million likes.
Most of Bông Tím’s videos reach impressive view counts, sometimes up to 15 million views.
As one of the leading KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers) in daily life content, Bông Tím and their team create humorous and relatable videos.
Thanks to the channel’s massive growth, Bông Tím has received numerous brand collaboration offers, including promotions for locations, restaurants, and stores.
Estimated PR video rates range from $1,000 to $2,000 per video.

TikToker Phan Bảo Long (@phanbaolonglms)

His TikTok channel currently has over 1.2 million followers and 4.6 million likes.
His most viral video has reached 8.6 million views.
@phanbaolonglms focuses on content related to nutrition, weight loss, and fitness, offering simple answers to common questions.
Alongside providing basic fitness tips, he strategically promotes coaching services, training courses, and local gyms in Buon Ma Thuot.

For Business TikTok Channels

TikTok can work wonders for your brand, but to achieve success, you need to create content that genuinely interests, engages, and encourages viewers to share. Based on successful business TikTok channels, here are 8 ideas to build a TikTok channel for your small business:

Behind-the-Scenes: Share behind-the-scenes videos to give customers insight into your business operations. This builds transparency and professionalism.
Order Packaging: Record the order packaging process to showcase your attention to detail and service quality.
Business Tips & Advice: Provide valuable business tips to attract customers and build trust.
Product Launches: Promote new products before they launch to generate excitement and interest.
Product Tutorials: Show customers how to use your products in a practical and detailed manner.
Meet a New Team Member or Partner: Introduce employees or partners to personalize your brand and build a connection with your audience.
Customer Engagement: Use TikTok features like duets or video replies to interact with customers and respond to their feedback.
Trend Spotting: Keep up with trending content on TikTok to create relevant and engaging videos.

Building an effective TikTok channel takes time and effort. Understand your target audience, create engaging content, and actively interact with the TikTok community to drive engagement and growth.

For TikTok Affiliate Marketing

TikTok is a great platform for affiliate marketing, just like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. To succeed, create engaging content focused on a niche you understand well and cater to an audience with similar interests. There are two effective ways to run a TikTok affiliate channel:

Adding an Affiliate Link in Your Bio (for business accounts or accounts with at least 1,000 followers). Using a mini landing page like Linktree helps optimize multiple links. Although TikTok has some limitations on affiliate links, leveraging this method allows you to maximize your affiliate marketing potential. Focus on creating compelling content and optimizing every opportunity to convert viewers into customers.
Integrating a TikTok Shop Cart in Your Videos. This method makes it easier for viewers to make purchase decisions, increasing conversion rates since users don’t have to leave TikTok to browse products.

TikTok Growth Handbook: Building a Channel from Scratch

Define Your Goals

Clearly outline the purpose of your TikTok channel. Are you building it to become a KOC/KOL, sell products, build a fan community, or generate income?

Start with small goals that lead to bigger objectives to ensure consistency and efficiency in your TikTok growth journey.

Example Goals:

Big Goal: Become a KOC to earn money from brand deals and affiliate marketing.
Small Goals:
- Month 1: Reach 10,000 followers
- Month 2: Reach 20,000 followers and earn $200 from affiliate marketing via TikTok Live
- Month 3: Reach 30,000 followers and secure the first brand deal with Brand A/B/C
- Month 4: …

Defining clear goals ensures alignment between you and your team, preventing unnecessary conflicts that could disrupt content creation.

Choose a Concept & Content Strategy

Select a suitable concept and content direction to create a unique impression in the minds of viewers.
Ensure content consistency so that your audience can easily recognize your channel.
Optimize video length within the range of 3 to 90 seconds.
You can apply different styles such as expert advice, editing & post-production, reaction videos, 3D videos, tutorials, and Q&A videos to attract and retain viewers.

Note:

Apart from violating TikTok’s policies and regulations, some key reasons why a channel may fail include:

Poor-quality video recording and editing.
Unappealing content that lacks coherence and consistency.

To build a TikTok channel from scratch, you need to invest time in research and learning from others. Dedicate a certain amount of time each day to studying successful TikTokers and keeping up with industry trends. Use this knowledge to create authentic and relatable content for your audience. This effort and focus will help you build a successful channel with a growing fan base.

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Utilize Hashtags Effectively

Identify hashtags that align with your content and the language of your target audience.
Narrow down your audience by using Vietnamese non-accent hashtags and fixed hashtags for your videos.

Keep Up with Trends

Monitor trending and hot topics on TikTok to take advantage of timely content creation opportunities.
Leverage trending moments to boost views and engagement.

Following trends can help you gain viral success and reach millions of views. However, this approach should be aligned with your expertise, especially for businesses that need actual buyers to generate revenue, not just viewers.

See more: Overview of TikTok market trends by industry

Leverage All Available TikTok Tools

Make the most of TikTok’s tools to track and optimize your channel’s performance. Some key features to utilize include:

Hashtag Research: TikTok’s hashtag feature helps your videos go viral quickly. Create hashtag campaigns or use popular hashtags to maximize reach.
Livestreaming: Take advantage of TikTok’s Live feature to connect directly with your audience, introduce products, services, or showcase engaging content. Live streaming offers an opportunity for real-time interaction and community building.
TikTok Ads: TikTok provides various advertising options tailored to different needs, helping you distribute and amplify your videos effectively. Running TikTok Ads can attract more viewers and expand your reach.
Analytics & Insights: Use TikTok’s analytics tool to monitor your video performance and audience engagement. Understanding your audience allows you to refine your content strategy and optimize results.

There are many other features in TikTok for Business waiting for you to explore. With this guide, you’ll have a solid foundation to start building your TikTok channel from zero. Use these tips to create compelling content and build strong connections with your community on TikTok!

See more: 4 sample TikTok channel building plans from A-Z

Final Thoughts

These insights from buybm365 aim to help individuals, businesses, sellers, and those interested in TikTok Affiliate Marketing successfully build a TikTok channel from scratch. TikTok is a powerful social media platform—make the most of it! Wishing you success in growing your TikTok channel

If you need the most reputable payment method and advertising account provider, you can message the fanpage buybm365.com-Ads to receive advice from HT Media. In addition, you can follow the articles. Latest articles related to our Digital Marketing.

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