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TikTok differs from other social media platforms in that they'll always expose your video to others rather than just your follower graph. If the initial set of exposed users have high engagement (i.e. they watch the entire thing), then TikTok will broaden the video's reach. This means anyone can make a successful video without spending huge amounts of time building a following. This is part of TikTok's secret sauce.

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It's true. I made an account last year and made a video just to try it out—a video of me playing guitar as my toddler climbing all over me making it very difficult to play. It was pretty cute, I posted it.

105,000+ views and 111 comments later, I had over 400 new followers. I made a few more videos, none of which hit quite as big, but it certainly psychologically incentivized me to want to invest more time and effort into being a 'creator'.

I didn't obviously, but a whole lot of people sure seem to.

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