How to Use TikTok: A Step-by-Step Guide

Introduction

TikTok, formerly known as Musical.ly, is a social media platform that lets you create short videos and share them with friends. It's a lot like Snapchat or Instagram Stories, but it has some unique features that make it stand out from the crowd. In this guide we'll walk you through everything you need to know about getting started with TikTok: account setup, preferences and editing tools, search and browsing tools, how to record original content and share existing content from other platforms (like Facebook), plus a few tips for beginner creators.

Getting Started

TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world with over 1 billion users. It's also a great way to share your stories and keep in touch with friends, family, and followers. With its simple interface, you won't need to spend hours figuring out how it works before posting your first video.

With this guide, we'll walk you through how to download TikTok on your mobile device or desktop computer so that you can start creating fun videos right away. We'll also show you how to connect your account with Google or Facebook so that those who already follow or friended you can easily see what new content goes up on your feed. Finally—and most importantly!—we'll explain how sharing content works in more detail so that when someone watches one of your videos they know exactly what they're getting into (and whether or not they want more).

Account Setup

After signing in, you'll be prompted to create an account. This is a simple process that involves entering your full name, birthday and email address.

• Set up your profile: After signing up for TikTok, you can customize your profile by adding a username and bio. The username is just the name people will see when they view your content on the app; it's how other users will find you. Your bio should be brief but detailed enough so others know who you are and what kind of content interests them (or at least what kind of theme you have).

• Create a profile picture: You can choose from any of the photos stored on your phone for this purpose—it's basically just an image that shows up as part of your profile page!

• Set privacy settings: You may want to lock down certain features such as who can send direct messages or favorite videos from yours, and whether or not anyone can see where on Earth in particular all those places were taken (this last one is usually labeled "location").

Settings

Your settings are located in the upper-right corner of your screen. The three main tabs are Profile, Privacy, and Account.

When you tap on "Settings," you'll see a list of options with checkboxes next to them. These include: Profile (your name, bio and profile picture), Privacy (whether or not others can find you through search), and Account (username). You can also choose whether or not to allow people who follow you to see your posts in their feed as well as how many people can see your post before it goes live by using these options: Only Me or Friends & Public

Editing Your Profile and Preferences

The first thing you'll want to do when creating a TikTok account is to edit your profile. Here, you can add a bio and cover photo. To access this screen, tap the icon in the top-right corner of your home screen or tap on "Settings" in the menu bar next to "Explore."

Next up—your preferences! This screen contains several settings that give you control over how much information is available about you within TikTok as well as who can see your videos and comments. To access this screen, tap on "Settings" from within any feed or video page and then select "Preferences."

• Edit Username: You can change this at any time by tapping on it once inside Preferences and entering another name (or no name at all). Be sure to check out our blog post on privacy settings for more information about how changing this affects who sees what accounts have uploaded.

• Edit Cover Photo: Tap here if you'd like to upload new artwork for use on your profile page instead of using an image from one of your stories that would otherwise show up there automatically by default; otherwise just leave these options alone if they're working well enough without changing them!

Searching and Browsing

• Searching and Browsing

So, you're ready to start browsing the TikTok universe. Here are a few features that will help you get there:

• Search for specific users: Whether it's your friend or favorite celebrity, typing their name into the search bar will bring up all of their videos and posts in one place.

• Browse popular content: If you want to see what's "trending," this is where it's at. The Trending feed shows the most popular videos from people you follow and other users whose content is trending across TikTok today.

• Browse by category: Looking for something specific? There are categories for just about everything on TikTok—from Fashion & Beauty to Comedy (and everything in between).

• Browse by location: Want to see what's happening in your area? Just type in your city or town name and jump right into local trends!

• Browse by hashtag: You can use hashtags on any platform these days, but they work especially well on social media apps like this one because they let others know what interests you have based on what keywords relate back specifically to your account’s username (e.g., #dogsofinstagram). That way if someone else has similar interests as yours then they'll probably follow back too!

• Browse by topic/age/gender/language proficiency etc.: It might take some time to get used to its layout before figuring out how best to navigate through all its options but eventually once done so users would discover how easy it becomes thereafter when navigating through various aspects such as topic selection buttons again here."

Creating Content

To get started, you'll want to create a channel. On TikTok, this is how you'll tell the world who you are and what kind of content you're up to. You can also use it as a way to connect with other creators. Once your channel has been created, upload videos and photos in order to share them with the world.

Use stories to share fun moments from your life that happened over a period of time (like a weekend). You can add text or stickers throughout your story and customize the way it looks by changing its theme and layout options. The most common type of story is called "daily vlogging" where users post videos every day for an extended period of time (typically anywhere from one week up to several months).

It's easy to get started with TikTok, but you have to understand how it works before sharing content to avoid unnecessary mistakes.

If you’re new to TikTok and want to get started, the first step is to sign up for an account. If you already have a TikTok account, all you need to do is log in.

Once you’ve signed up or logged in, it's time to explore the app. You may notice that there are a lot of buttons on the main page: 'Explore', 'Feed', 'Profile', and others. The Explore button shows popular videos from other creators around the world; from this tab, you can also create your own channel by tapping "Create". The Feed shows posts from people who are connected with each person using TikTok (this includes celebrities like Ariana Grande). The Profile section has information about who created/owns this profile including their gender and age bracket so users can see if they want their content or not before viewing it!

Conclusion

In this article, we’ve covered all the ins and outs of TikTok. We hope you find it useful to start your next video project. If you have any questions or comments about our process or recommendations for other users, please let us know in the comments below!