Felecia Dunmore

Felecia Freely is a Senior Software Engineer at Capital One, a designer, writer, and content creator interested in social constructionism, sociology, philosophy, and technology. As a mid-tier influencer, she has over 400K followers on TikTok. Felecia creates educational and entertaining content, focusing on complex topics by referencing famous thought experiments, theories, and awe-inspiring stories that encourage a deeper understanding of society.

 
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • Felecia Freely explains how to leverage and program TikTok’s algorithm 
  • Tips for interpreting TikTok’s milestones and optimizing content to achieve them
  • The importance of experimenting with strategies to create successful content
  • Felecia’s advice for structuring content to influence audience psychology and maximize views
  • How TikTok is revolutionizing content for social media
  • What is the ripple effect?

In this episode…

When creating content on TikTok, many users don’t understand its unique algorithm and, as a result, struggle to engage audiences. So, how can you effectively leverage this social platform to produce compelling content?

According to influencer Felecia Freely, TikTok’s algorithm differs from other platforms. Instead of displaying content from followers, it curates videos based on the content you’ve previously encountered. To ensure your videos reach new audiences and optimize engagement rates, it’s essential to post multiple topics and themes per day. By structuring your content, you can compare statistics on each video to determine an effective strategy. 

In today’s episode of What The Teck? Rolando Rosas and Dave Kelly talk with Felecia Freely about programming TikTok’s algorithm to maximize audience engagement. Felecia explains the ripple effect, how TikTok is revolutionizing content on social media, and shares tips for structuring content to affect audience psychology and maximize views.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Global Teck Worldwide. 

We are a full-service online retailer of professional headsets, webcams, and speaker phones from top manufacturers. 

Since 2002, Global Teck Worldwide has provided affordable, high-quality communications equipment and customized telecommunications services to organizations of all sizes.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:00

Welcome to the What The Teck? podcast where we talk about business and Office Technology and put our 20 years of expertise to discussing trends and issues impacting the workplace

Rolando Rosas 0:16

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Dave Kelly 0:37

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Felecia Freely 0:58

I took this screenshot and I had a little over 4000 followers. I took this screenshot today. I’m at 170k. I’m Felecia, I’m a software engineer. And two months ago I made this video, I’m gonna figure out this TikTok algorithm. I think it’s safe to say I figured it out.

Rolando Rosas 1:20

And welcome back to another session of What The Teck? I’m Rolando and on today’s podcast. We’ve got a special one for you while we are deconstructing TikTok now before we get to Felecia, and we talk about deconstructing TikTok, I gotta bring on somebody that I can never leave behind. That’s Mr. Dave Kelly.

Dave Kelly 1:41

Rolando really great to see you listen, demystifying TikTok. And really what’s behind that curtain. There’s so much to learn. We’re having some fun out there what I thought used to just be a funny app for kids to make each other laugh is now turning into a business tool for folks to share their story, promote their business, promote their services. And what I’ve been seeing from Felecia, wow, she’s really opening up my eyes to a lot of new ideas and approaches with TikTok.

Rolando Rosas 2:09

You better believe it Dave. She’s onto something. Let me tell you about Felecia Freely. Felecia is an experienced and skilled blogger podcast host and technologist. She’s just blown up on tickets. Let me just say it that way. Needless to say Felecia is a great person. I’m gonna let her tell you in her own words. So without further ado, let’s bring on Felecia Freely.

Felecia Freely 2:33

Hello, thank you for having me on the pod. This is awesome. I’m doing pretty good. How are you guys doing?

Rolando Rosas 2:39

I’m doing great. Where are you checking in from today?

Felecia Freely 2:42

So I am checking in from Washington, DC.

Rolando Rosas 2:45

Felecia, I brought you here because you have discovered something that I haven’t heard other people talk about. And it caused me to reach out to you. I gotta say what you said on your TikTok. I was like, Whoa, I’ve never heard anybody talk about this. There were some things that really resonated with me with other projects that we’re working on prioritization ratio milestones and good content. This sounds exactly like the blueprint for Amazon exactly the way you explained it. And it sounds like it all ties together with what you’re talking about TikTok.

Felecia Freely 3:19

It’s like one big circle, right? Where like this should feed this, this should be best, for example, like having great content actually feeds the algorithm. Because if you have great content, then users are engaging with it, and they’re liking it. And it’s really understanding that algorithms. There’s like solid information that like us as humans understand. Like, we can watch a video we can say that was a good video, that’s a human skill that we have. An algorithm doesn’t have it and algorithm doesn’t understand things like good or bad algorithms have to be programmed and told what good and bad is comments, shares? These are all ways that the algorithm determines what is good and what is bad. And so good content leads to more engagement likes comments and shares which teaches the algorithm Hey, that this is a good video. And on TikTok. The great thing about TikTok is that TikTok has an actual affinity or discovering and delivering content that people truly enjoy. And that is like a differentiating factor of TikTok on other social networking platforms like Instagram or Twitter or even YouTube. There is this idea of like, just general engagement that seems to be one of their key metrics is its general engagement. TikTok needs to prioritize content that people actually enjoy. So what that means is they limit the content that they believe will get like negative reactions out of you, they actually want you to have a good time. So if we understand that, the TikTok algorithm values when you like a video If you share a video, it takes those hashtags that are associated with that video as well as other data that’s behind the scenes that we don’t have privy to. And it then shows you more content. So the idea is that no one should be inundated with a bunch of content that they don’t enjoy. Unless they are somehow engaging with it. If they’re commenting on things that they hate, TikTok will show them more. So a lot of people don’t understand that that’s like a whole nother side of the algorithm where us as users, we need to understand that we are programming the algorithm to show us what we want. So when we engage with content, whether or not we like it, algorithm doesn’t know, because algorithm doesn’t have those type of saw human centric skills that we naturally have as human beings, the algorithm only goes based off of numbers and things like likes and comments and those types of things. So yeah, there are many sides to the algorithm,

Rolando Rosas 5:56

And you said something in that clip, that caused me almost immediately to double check your math, so to speak. So you said milestones, and you had mentioned towards the end of the video that maybe when you get to 50, maybe get to 100, and so on, I checked it. And guess what, you’re absolutely right, on our posts, as soon as we crossed a 100, video mark, instantly, our videos average went up. When we got to the 200 video mark, the very next video or the second one, like 202, instantly went up the same pattern. And so we’re noticing this pattern, and I would ask if maybe you’ve noticed that on your videos, you get to about the 100 threshold? Did you see an immediate bump around the 200 threshold? Have you seen maybe I’ll also put it out to our viewers, if you have a TikTok account, take a look at it. If you’re at over 100 videos, there’s no easy way to do it, you literally have to go on your profile and start counting. That’s the only way to do it. So I think this is right on the spot. Because Felecia, tell me if I’m wrong, how many videos have you consumed of people, even the people we respect probably like Gary Vaynerchuk. He says post four times a day on TikTok, I’ve heard that multiple clips of him throughout the internet say that. But there’s no reasoning by it. There is no engineer like yourself telling us if I put a system together, I’d want to do X because if you get to X, maybe we have a dataset that can validate something statistically and it’d be statistically significant. And so once you hit that number, then let’s start doing this. And then the next and the next milestone.

Felecia Freely 7:37

Perfectly said, Yes, exactly. Get ready for a Pro Tip. So TikTok has milestones built into the algorithm. And there is one that is already colloquially known for the most part, and that is that your very first TikTok has the propensity to be pushed aggressively by the algorithm. And that’s something that we are already know another way of thinking about it is going to your profile, looking at your first video and comparing it to like your second or third. And so basically, there’s just already this idea of understanding that TikTok’s algorithm knows, and it’s somehow counting the number of videos that you’re putting out. So the idea is that why would the algorithm stop at just your first video, when you think about the nature of the algorithm, and how TikTok is like an inverted model. When comparing to other social networking apps, the TikTok For You page is equivalent, in many ways to the Instagram explorer page. But when you open up the Instagram app, you are first shown the people that you follow when you open the TikTok app, you are more likely to be shown people who you do not follow. And when it comes to understanding that and understanding that there is a difference, the idea of posting more starts to make a lot of sense. Another one is that the algorithm does not post in chronological order. So to your point, you said that you don’t even know when I posted that video. And that’s because it’s being shown to people right now for the first time, and it’s a few weeks old.

Rolando Rosas 9:12

So that’s the point I don’t really get sometimes I get the latest video. Sometimes I get something from maybe a couple of months ago. And to me it’s brand new, holy smokes, this person said that, and I go to your profile. And I’m like, wait a minute, she’s already been posting 20 More videos besides that one.

Felecia Freely 9:30

Exactly. And so that is actually an opportunity when we can wrap our heads around the idea that this platform is different. And as a content creator, you have to figure out how things work on this platform. Once you really just accept that fact. And you start learning about it. TikTok is an awesome place to be because the algorithm does the work for you. The algorithm builds your following for you. All you have to do is put out good content. So back to them. milestones. Yes, the idea behind the concept of the TikTok algorithm having milestones is this idea that every so often, the TikTok algorithm will aggressively push your video. So it’s not going to happen every single video, it might be your first video. And then the next one might be your 10th video, the next one might be your 50, your 50th, your 100, we don’t exactly know where the milestones are, here comes a Pro Tip. So if you can understand that the milestones are already predetermined, and that all you have to do is get there. The idea then is to say, okay, obviously, I want to get there as fast as possible. So this is another, I’ll say, a psychological side of the algorithm that content creators really need to absorb. And that is that not only are we, you know, having this conversation to figure out how to hack the TikTok algorithm. But we as content creators also have to do the work to hack ourselves and to hack our own psychology and our own motivation structures. And so let’s say just in theory, that TikTok will aggressively push your video every 10 videos. So let’s say that there’s a milestone mechanism that increments is in tens, right? If you’re posting one video a day, then you won’t even feel that milestone until you’re into your second week. And if that’s the case, then it’s no wonder why people end up losing motivation. Because you’re putting out a video a day, and they don’t understand. And by the time that they do get to that 10th day, and they do post that 10th video, they have put all of this psychological weight into it. And when TikTok pushes, it’s not going to be enough.

Rolando Rosas 11:42

All these platforms have some kind of guide that tell you don’t post this, then don’t post that you should post good content. But there should be something that says we are measuring success in this way. Because, again, I go back to our experience on Amazon, Amazon’s very clear on what is going to make you successful. From a metric standpoint, if you don’t achieve a 97% rate of X, Y and Z, we’re going to suspend your account. And if you don’t do this, and do on time deliveries by this exact number, anything below that you’re going to be demoted in the platform. There’s nothing like that that’s available to content creators, but we’d be valuable if there was a parameter to determine what is either good, or if you’re meeting some metrics besides just the engagement rate, because that milestone thing is really important to understand. Because now I know, okay, once I get to 100, things are going to be different. And if I don’t meet some of the criteria, when I get to 100, I may not have a video be shown to a million people.

Felecia Freely 12:51

Precisely. And that is exactly what I did. And that is what I recommend. So I’m a very analytical person, right? Like, I’m a software engineer. So it should be no surprise that I was tracking my progress from day one. So the very first video that I posted on my @Feleciaforthewin TikTok page got 2000 views. And ever since then, I have been tracking on a daily basis. And the thing to understand is that because the nature of the algorithm and the way that it shows videos out of order, the way that a lot of it is still very much a black box. The thing to understand is that your followers, they do not increase linearly, necessarily. It has like an exponential or like a compound effect, really. So for the first week, I started out with 65 followers after that first video. The next week, I had 2000, the week after that I had over 10,000. And so you’re exactly right about one strategy could definitely be to just go intense for three to four weeks, build your following that way and then simmer down that is definitely another way or to your point, you could continue to post less than three a day. But you have to understand that you’re just going to get there slower. So it’s really about understanding our psychological motivation structure.

Dave Kelly 14:15

So Felecia, I have a question for you. So when you’re deconstructing an algorithm, you come up with theories of something that you think is working. Now we have a theory Rolando says this quite often when we find something that’s working, whether it’s on TikTok, or YouTube or any other platform or e-commerce platform. When Rolando doubles down, he likes to say what do you say we’d like to put gasoline on fire it is. So we test something. We’re getting some success. We throw gasoline on the fire. We see that we were right. And cheers. Everyone’s high fiving and it’s so exciting. What was a recent theory that you tested that you believe you hit it right on the nose, and then you double down on that And what was the result of it?

Felecia Freely 15:02

Oh, very interesting. I love this question. Get ready for a Pro Tip. If you want to be successful on TikTok, the thing to understand is that you have to have an experimentation mentality. The idea is to humble ourselves, and to realize that we don’t know what good content is, there are things that I might want to talk about. But we have to also be listening to the audience. What are they interested in? And when you do stumble upon that, when you do say, Oh, the audience seems to think that this topic is interesting, the audience seems to like the way that I’ve set the story up in this way. The idea is do exactly what you said, double down on it, try to recreate it TikTok, since they show your posts out of order, you can do that you can double down on it, there is no detriment to revisiting the same concept or the same content idea and repurposing it and doing it in different ways. Because the idea is that it’s going to be a For You page where it will be pushed to a brand new audience. So yes, the question is extremely valid, having an experimentation mentality is extremely important. And I have tried a lot of experiments.

Rolando Rosas 16:18

You’ve hit a lot of topics. The last thing in one lane when people say conventional TikTok, and Instagram, and YouTube wisdom is you find a niche stay there. But you talk about various topics, you talk about social contracts, you talk about algorithms, which is quite different than the social construct, and they could be related, but you’re talking very technical, mathematical, analytical versus more emotional with some of the TikToks that you put out. So the conventional wisdom on TikTok that you should be niched, on that one lane isn’t necessarily correct.

Felecia Freely 16:53

I would say the intentions are good and the intentions are there. And I would say that is really good colloquial advice to give. But personally, you’re exactly right. What it is actually a reflection of. It’s a system that I have for myself. So I’m a systems thinker. So that’s how it relates to systems thinker. I love algorithms. I love being a software engineer, because it is about uncovering, maintaining and creating systems. I also love to talk about like social constructionism, because it is about the system that is our society. So that’s how my brain works. So it’s no surprise that when it comes to how I make content, it is due to a particular system that I have. And so to your question, what I do is I stay, I actually do stay niche, technically, but within a few buckets. So this is what I actually recommend to people who ask me for advice when it comes to getting started on TikTok, and that is the idea of understanding that all right, if we want to be successful, right, and we want to go the intense route, we want to post somewhere around 10 a day, the idea is to break that down into something that is digestible for us, because 10 is a lot. So a way that we can break that down is understanding that 10 videos really equals three different buckets. So we’re human beings, we’re all dynamic, we can think of three different buckets that represent our overarching theme that we would like. And the idea is to pour into those buckets every day. So one of the buckets that you mentioned, is software engineering, I pour into that bucket, right, like at least once or twice a week, when I was first starting out and I was going the intense route. I was doing that three times a day. And the same is true for social constructs. And I have like motivation bucket where it was just me getting on there and just being excited and upbeat and motivating people to get through their days. And so that is a way that we can deconstruct our own psychology to understand that we can do 10 a day, it’s just about breaking it down into atomic pieces. So that way we can hack our own psychology. 

Dave Kelly 19:05

In doing is you’re trying to reach that you’re fishing with five different kinds of bait and you’re like, I’ll take five different kinds of fish today. That’s fine. We’ll see if there’s anybody out there that’s looking for something to watch.

Felecia Freely 19:16

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that is the point of understanding once again, you can’t stress it enough understanding that the algorithm posts to people who have no context on you. Like we post a video to TikTok The idea is to assume that it is reaching someone who has never seen you who has never been introduced to the topic that you’re talking about. And because of that, the idea is that we can talk about the same topic. We can talk about the same concept in multiple different ways. Because to your point, multiple different ways hit multiple different people and resonate with people differently.

Dave Kelly 19:54

Are you doing 10 a day would you say is that your average?

Felecia Freely 19:57

So I did 10 a day for a month, and then I have slowed down. I’ve tried to post one a day. But over time the TikTok algorithm starts to decline and how much it pushes my video. So the sweet spot that I’ve found is averaging somewhere between one and three a day. And that seems to keep me and the graces of the TikTok gods.

Rolando Rosas 20:20

we noticed the same thing on our account, we were around one a day for quite some time. And we bumped that up just to, and we hit that as soon as we got to around the 200 mark. And we started hitting two a day and going over that milestone of 200. And we immediately saw a bump on the average, which is good, it’s great if you go viral. But then if you can’t get to where you were before, on your average, then the viral illness sometimes doesn’t even really help you. That’s great to get more followers. But you want your average overall videos to keep increasing from 500 views to 1000 to 2000 to 5000, and so on and so on, rather than a million, then you’re back down to 100 views on everything. 

Felecia Freely 21:04

Absolutely, absolutely. And to piggyback on what you’re saying another part to this journey, is understanding that what got you to 100 followers isn’t going to get you to 1000, which isn’t going to get to shoot to a million. So we have to keep experimenting, we have to keep trying new things. And understanding that is a part of the process. There’s no moment where you’re like, Alright, we’ve made enough content. No, every day is a new challenge, we have to show up every day. And we have to keep that same mentality that we’ve had from the beginning of trying to figure it out. And so absolutely 100%. And then there’s this other reason why increasing volume, I think, tends to really work for people. And that is because it helps us to learn fast. If you’re just starting out, right, and you’re doing one video a day, you’re only able to learn from one video a day. But if you increase your dataset, you’re able to process faster. And so you end up learning a lot when you end up posting a lot.

Rolando Rosas 22:07

That’s a very good analysis of that. Yeah. And especially if you’re looking at the data itself, if you’re just posting without looking at the data, those insights may not reveal itself. But that makes sense. If you’re looking at the numbers, but you only have one video to look at, and then look at the numbers versus four a day.

Felecia Freely 22:27

Absolutely. And it’s about understanding that you want to narrow down the factors, really. So if you’re posting one video a day, for example. And you’re just getting started. The idea is okay, what are you going to compare your video from yesterday to the day before, but that was a whole nother day. So what if you can’t really get a good accurate understanding of what is going on, if you’re comparing the video that you posted on Friday to the video that you posted on Monday, it’s completely different situation completely different contexts. And people use the app differently on different days. And so the idea is, in order to compare, you need a minimum of two, in order to do a comparison, you need a minimum of two subjects. So if anything, the minimum should really be posting two a day, because then at least you can compare these two against each other. But obviously, I am always going out for more volume, there is an account that came my way. It’s a young guy, maybe 20 years old, and all of his videos are less than 10 seconds. He doesn’t talk, he is in a very normal and conventional bathroom. And it is just words on a screen. But he posts 30 times a day. And this person has 700,000 followers, it is insane. So this is my leading theory right now, the more simplistic that your content is, the more important it is to increase volume. If you’re posting like very high quality content, then I do believe that it’s probably likely that you wouldn’t need to post as much. It’s probably some sort of scale, some sort of relational skills that exist in some way. That’s like a theory that I’m currently testing out. 

Rolando Rosas 24:15

It’s a very interesting theory because TikTok, you have people that are just grabbing their phone and just talking and you have some that have really high quality video, and there’s a lot of room in between and there’s followers for the entire spectrum, right, like you’re saying and it’s just being served up every single day, and it’s no longer a shake your booty contest and there’s a lot of money going into TikTok. And I want to get your thoughts on what you’re seeing with what’s playing out in front of us right now in real time. TikTok, as of last year overtook all other apps in terms of downloads, it’s also overtaking YouTube in terms of watch time, from a platform perspective. It’s had the effect of literally changing what Instagram is doing and prioritizing, as well as YouTube, which shorts and other platforms, I just read today that Amazon is going to serve up more videos off of its platform in the future, and they’re just rolling out the API for it right now. So that videos that are unboxing, and reviews, and all the rest can live off of Amazon and pull people back into Amazon.

Felecia Freely 25:26

That makes sense. That’s amazing. Yeah. And why is that right? Why is TikTok actually changing the way that all of the you know, incumbent platforms are doing their business? And I think it is because there’s this thing that happens, right, because we’re in like a free market, where naturally, the companies that succeed, and the new companies that take over our time and our attention are always better in some way. Right, then then the incumbent, I do believe that the TikTok algorithm is superior, it is better than the other platforms, because TikTok seems to have taken into consideration the problems that the other platforms have had. So things like outrage, culture, and all of that on like, Twitter, Facebook, on all of these platforms, those things seem to be very prevalent. And those seem to be reasons why people take breaks from the platform, leave the platform TikTok seems to understand that, let’s try to figure out what people like. And sure, we’ll figure out what they don’t like as well. But we actually want them to stay here long term. And so I do believe that the TikTok algorithm specifically sends us things that they think that will like specifically sends us things that we might not like. And I think that they like to have control over those factors, as opposed to just generally optimizing for engagement, as I was saying, or, and so the TikTok algorithm, in my opinion, is totally superior. Because whatever the algorithm is optimizing for during that time, it has the data to deliver that, now that I’ve spent so much time on TikTok, when I go to YouTube, or Instagram or Twitter, it feels a lot like I am, I can use the word shopping, I can use the word hunting, I am hunting for something that will entertain me. But the TikTok algorithm does that for me. It allows me to be lazy, I get to just come to the app. And the algorithm has already figured out everything that I like, and they’re going to show me so from my perspective, like the guarantee rate for entertainment or enjoyment is higher on TikTok. And so I think that is why a lot of people are going to it.

Dave Kelly 27:49

Do you think people have an opportunity to restart the algorithm to maybe reflect on it and say, I didn’t realize I was teaching TikTok to entertain me with mindless content. For example, if I’m a new user to TikTok, and I’m not posting, I’m more viewing, so I open up my account, I create a profile. And I see something that’s just immature, ridiculous, but I laugh at it, and I share it with somebody. Now I’m being served up things that are just similar to that. And I don’t realize it. And now I’m wondering if people have ever looked back and said, You know what, I’m not doing myself any favors. I’m not educating myself, I’m laughing at stupid things. Do people have an opportunity to start over and say, you know, I don’t want I don’t want this, I want to start over and make a new profile. Is the algorithm allow you to do that?

Felecia Freely 28:45

Absolutely. Not only does it allow you to do that, it optimizes for that, really. So I’ll say two things about this. The first is that yes, you can definitely reprogram the algorithm to be closer to your actual interest. And like what you would actually like to get out of the platform, you do that by going to the Discover tab, which none of us go to because the For You page is like really discover is how we discovered But technically, you can go to the Discover tab and type in the search bar, which you want to be interested in, you could go in there and you can type in social constructionism. And then you will see all types of content you like a bunch of that you follow those people. And that will be the content that you start seeing more on your page. And I’ll say the second half, which ties into the first half. And that is when you understand how the algorithm works. And you understand that the For You page is the algorithms guess at a really good curated list of things that will entertain you. That’s what the For You page is. And when you understand that it makes sense that the algorithm is putting together all of these pieces. So let’s say that you’re following in theory, a million people you You’re never going to be on the app and watch a million videos. So there has to be some sort of mechanism that figures out the order, right? What I’ve noticed in TikTok is that order of priority changes. So there are people who might have seen my content months ago, and they might have enjoyed it, they might have liked it, they follow Me. But if I posted a video today, there is no guarantee that it’ll go to them. TikTok might not show that person another one of my videos for another month or two, because it has to put things in order in some way. And so the algorithm what I have noticed, tries a bunch of different things, when you first follow a creator, they will show you more from that creator. But over time, you will notice that you’ll stop seeing things from that creator. Why because the algorithm has to make room for the other people that you follow, because they have to make room for discovery. And that’s another thing that us as creators have to just understand is that this is not Instagram, where we are posting content to engage with our followers. This is TikTok, where we’re posting content to engage predominantly with new fresh faces. So what that means is that we are not going to be able to have our cake and eat it too. The algorithm is not going to allow every video of ours to go to every follower of ours and show us to new people. That’s just not how the algorithm works.

Rolando Rosas 31:29

And they start you by default on on the For You page, rather than on your following page, which makes it very different than all the other platforms, you don’t have the option to switch very easily between those two things.

Felecia Freely 31:44

Absolutely. So we think about the For You page. From that perspective, let’s just say if I were on the TikTok algorithm team, and I was in charge of maintaining and creating and keeping up to date with the TikTok algorithm, if I was thinking about the For You page, then I would expect for that algorithm to have something like 50% of the videos on the For You page have to be people that don’t follow. Otherwise, it’s just the following tab. So it makes sense, the four year page is not a place where the algorithm show your followers all of your videos, it doesn’t make sense before you page past to be optimizing for new people discovering you, we can’t stress it enough. Because when it clicks in your mind, it’s Oh, I understand things start to fall in place. There’s this other concept that I have heard about. And I have been expanding on this idea a little bit recently. And that is this idea of the algorithm having a ripple effect. So what that means is that when we post a video, of course, we’re going to use our hashtags, because that is the routing mechanism. That is our ability to tell the algorithm sin this video in this direction. So when we first posted more than likely the algorithm already has predetermined and says that we’re going to send a percentage of her followers this video that she just posted, we’re going to send a percentage of people who have interacted with this hashtag this video, and we’re going to see how it goes. Based on the likes, based on the engagement rates based on the amount of shares that we can think of that in terms of almost like a sort of test. And if we pass that test, then the algorithm ripples out. And we get to go to an even wider audience. Now the thing to understand and why I say wider, and not necessarily larger is because more than likely, the audience is getting more and more general. So this is something that as content creators, we have to keep in mind, if I’m posting content about, for example, Social constructionism. For the first time, it’s going to go to people who more than likely have some degree of context. But if that video does well, and passes, that test, is going to go to people who have a little less context, and a little less context and a little less context. And so the idea is to understand that in order to have a viral video or tic tac, your video has to be able to communicate with people that have these different levels of contexts. This is why a lot of my videos, I might be talking about very specific topics. But I make it a point to give definitions. So that way when it reaches that widest audience, they can still understand what we’re talking about. If you just think about it that way you think about the rippling effect and you try to include all of those people. That is how you can go viral. You can’t go viral if you’re only talking to people who have a little bit of context.

Rolando Rosas 34:50

So Felecia, I want to thank you for coming on today being a great sport, sharing your knowledge about deconstructing TikTok and In the myths around that, I look forward to seeing more of your videos. Where can people watch or engage if they want to get in touch with you and say, Hey, I’m a brand. I need some help. Or I would love to talk to you a little bit more about how we can blow up on social media. How should they do that? 

Felecia Freely 35:18

Absolutely, definitely. Follow me on TikTok. So that’s @feleciaforthewin on TikTok, you can also visit my website and that’s Feleciaforthewin.com. I do offer consultation services right now. So people can definitely book me and I will tell them everything that I know, I have no reason to gatekeep. And soon I will be rolling out TikTok coaching as well. So that way, I can work with people over time. And I can start seeing some of the satisfaction from seeing multiple accounts and grow as well. So yeah, @Feleciaforthewin everywhere.

Rolando Rosas 35:50

Awesome. Felecia, I want to thank you again, being so kind and so awesome today. And coming to our podcast. I’m sure our audience has also loved the information that you’ve shared. I want to thank you. Thank you very much for coming on. You’re welcome. Anytime you want to come back.

Felecia Freely 36:07

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This is so much fun.

Outro 36:09

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