TikTok rolls out new feature to manage keywords on your content after posting it

Yes, I know, when you started creating content on TikTok in 2020, you probably thought growing your follower count was all about dancing and being funny. However, if what you are looking for is to build a more solid strategy… that alone is not enough.

TikTok has just launched the “manage keywords” feature so you can add keywords to your videos after they are published, allowing the algorithm to show them to people who are genuinely interested in that content.

How to appear on your target audience’s “For You” page on TikTok

Before we get into the details and explain the new feature, let us make a few things clear.

TikTok works like this: you upload a video, it shows it to a small group of people, evaluates how your video performs, and if it does well, it shows it to another slightly larger group. And so on. If, within that first group of people, the algorithm realizes that no one interacts with it, people stop watching it after the second or third second, or no one saves it… TikTok stops showing it. The key is making sure that video reaches people who are actually interested in the topic you are talking about.

Given how saturated users already are with content… how do we reach our target audience? With SEO, dear marketer.

Even if you thought SEO was going to die and that GEO would become the norm, that is not the case (for now). In fact, we are seeing that every time we search for something on Google or browse Discover, Instagram or TikTok videos increasingly appear in the results. 

We already explained this when  we told you that both Instagram and TikTok had limited hashtag use to prevent spam. Ideally, you should use hashtags as keywords integrated into the text, while also including those words in your video script and captions. That way, the platform will understand your content much better and show it to the right people.

Basically, they are asking us to hand everything to them on a silver platter. That is why TikTok’s new keyword management feature is so important.

How to add keywords to your TikTok videos

To be honest, I came across this feature by chance while uploading one of our podcast clips to TikTok (go ahead and follow us).

Here is the step-by-step process for using the “manage keywords” option on the ByteDance platform. 

1. Upload a video to TikTok
2. Click the three dots in the bottom right corner.
3. Browse the options until you find “Manage keywords”

   

4. Choose which keywords you want to add and whether you would like to block some. If you want to block keywords, keep in mind that similar words will also be blocked. For example, if you do not want to include the word “dance,” the word “dancing” will also be blocked.
5. For now, we do not know the limit on how many you can add, but make sure they are relevant terms and that they appear in both the video and the copy of your post.

From what we know, this new feature has not been live for very long, so we will need to see how it performs and whether these keywords actually have an impact on your metrics.