Imagine a situation: you become popular, your video gets millions of views, hundreds of people want to buy your product, and you do not even know about it. This is exactly what happened to me about 4 years ago. Back then, TikTok was just starting to grow fast. I was making videos of the sticker application process for marketplaces to show what the sticker looks like on a real wall.
It was October, which is important. Someone asked me, Why don't you post this on TikTok? I was already posting videos on YouTube and was skeptical about TikTok at the time, but I decided to try. I created an account and started uploading 2 or 3 videos a week. I had about 5 or 10 followers by the end of October. It was impossible to put a link in the profile because the platform only allowed it for accounts with at least 1000 followers. So, I thought I would just post one video a week and let them stay there.
The beginning of November is the start of the Christmas season. I posted a video where I put our Christmas tree sticker on the wall: first the tree itself, then the decorations separately on top of it. I posted it and forgot. Then I posted a couple more videos until the middle of November. Our seasonal busy period started, with orders and work, so there was no time to post videos at all.
A month and a half passes. It is the end of December, right before Christmas. A friend tells me, Cool video about the Christmas tree, well done. Then a second person writes, Wow, you got so many views. I did not understand what they were talking about, so I started checking my social media and remembered about TikTok. I log into TikTok. And my jaw drops to the floor. That exact video with the Christmas tree has 6 million views. More than a thousand comments. And almost every fifth comment says, Where to buy, Give me a link, or I need this right now.
It turned out the video became popular for a reason. A real war started in the comments. Some wrote that this sticker kills the Christmas spirit. Others said it was a genius alternative for small apartments. A third group, and there were many of them, were happy that it was the perfect option for cat and dog owners whose pets always knock over real trees. The algorithms saw the activity and pushed the video to the moon.
And the whole time, I was just working and did not log into the app. I tried to write back to everyone and reply to the comments, but of course, I missed my chance. It was already December 20, nobody needed Christmas trees anymore, and the season was over. When I showed this to my marketer friend, he held his head. You missed the chance of the year, he said. You could not put an active link, but you could write it as text in the profile description. People would copy it. But my description was empty.
Of course, sales on the marketplaces grew a little during that period because the most determined people probably searched for us using images. But I simply lost the majority of the orders. The next year, I tried to repeat the success: I re-uploaded the video, changed the editing, and boosted it. But the magic was gone. The videos got around 10 or 12 thousand views, but there was no such hype anymore.
Yeah. Sometimes one video can change a business overnight. But only if you keep your finger on the pulse.
