Your 28-Day TikTok Plan: A Week-by-Week Guide for Musicians

Here are three facts that changed how I think about TikTok.

• 8 out of 10 songs that hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2025 went viral on TikTok first.
• Lola Young won the Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance with Messy.
• Messy became a viral TikTok hit in 2024, then went to No. 1 in the UK and into the top 40 in the US.

(Bonus fact: Messy was my second most played song of 2025.)

And the list goes on. Lil Nas X, Lizzo, Megan Thee Stallion, Doja Cat, SZA and Olivia Rodrigo were all nominated for or won Grammys with songs that went viral on TikTok first.

It doesn't matter how old you are or what genre you make. In 2026, TikTok is the biggest fuel for an artist's growth.

So I put together a 28-day plan, one week at a time. By the end, you'll understand why social media matters so much, know the foundations of a content strategy that works, start building momentum, and know how to turn views into fans.

Week 1: Get your mindset right

I sucked at content creation when I started.

I had zero clue what I was doing, and I still felt like I knew everything. That's the most dangerous approach ever.

So the first step is to accept that a year from now, you'll look back and laugh at your current content and your current mindset. Your job is to work toward becoming that better version of yourself.

Reading tips is step one. But no baby ever learned to walk by reading newsletters about it, so you have to put in the work.

It helps to find an accountability buddy. And if you want a second opinion on a video, Content Buddy is a free tool I built that looks at your content and tells you what to fix.

5 more reasons you need to be on TikTok:

• It levels the playing field. A bedroom producer can reach people all over the world without a label budget, because the algorithm doesn't care about your setup.
• It drives streams. A sound that goes viral sends people straight to Spotify, and 75% of US TikTok users say they discover new music there.
• Gen Z spends its time there. They're the core music fans, and TikTok gives you direct access to the superfans who stream your songs and buy merch.
• Fans become your marketing team. They use your sounds and make their own videos, which gives you waves of free promotion that feels authentic.
• It's where connections happen. Duets, stitches and replies to comments build personal relationships that turn viewers into listeners and fans.

The version of you that believes you can do this and the version that believes you can't are both right.

I'm the least spiritual person on the planet, but I've seen it happen over and over. Your mindset creates your reality.

Week 2: Stop posting just for the sake of it

One of the biggest mistakes musicians make is posting content just to post something. I've been there, and I know how tempting it is.

I talked about this with Stella Sky on my podcast. Her videos kept going viral, but her streams barely moved. So the main question we tried to answer was why that happens, and how to fix it.

The numbers can give you a quick ego boost and make you feel like you're making progress. But you end up with results that don't match your expectations, and your growth slows down.

Promoting your music is only one of 7 types of content, and every type has a job. Some help you reach new people, some build the relationship with the fans you already have, and some sell your music or your shows.

Your goal is to find the right balance between them. That's how you keep attracting new fans, bring them closer to you as an artist, and eventually sell your music or your tickets.

It takes time, and it isn't easy. But without a system, you end up posting like an amateur. Instead of making this year your breakthrough, you might be stuck until 2030, or give up because nothing seems to work.

The 7 types of content:

• Behind the scenes. Show your life, your shows and your process. It builds a closer connection, and if you have an interesting story or journey, it can bring in people who don't know you yet.
• Engagement content. The algorithm cares about engagement more than anything: comments, shares, saves, DMs, remixes and duets. You need videos that give people a reason to respond.
• Funny videos and trending sounds. These mostly attract other musicians who relate to your journey, and they show your fans what it's like to be you.
• Song promotion. This is the most important type, because it's you promoting one of your songs. When a new song comes out, this is where your focus goes.
• Showing your skills. Singing, songwriting, producing or playing an instrument. If you're very good at something, you'll attract an audience easily, and so many artists got where they are by starting with covers. If you're not good enough yet, spend more time getting better.
• Talking to the camera. It's close to behind the scenes, but it takes much less work and doesn't have to be about your career. You talk about a topic that starts a conversation in the comments.
• Tutorials and recommendations. Like trending sounds, these mostly attract other musicians, which is great for building a community and finding collaborations. For your fans, they work as another behind-the-scenes look.

Now open TikTok or Instagram Reels and pay attention to the types of content other musicians are making.

Then pick the 2 or 3 types that fit your brand best, and that you can keep making for months without burning out. When a new song comes out, focus on song promotion. Between releases, focus on getting discovered and building connections with your audience.

Week 3: Make videos people want to watch

"Why is nobody watching my content?"

That's what I was screaming (in my head) four years ago while staring at my phone.

I had spent 2 hours making my latest TikTok, and after 3 days it had 300 views. Meanwhile, a simple trend video I threw together in 10 minutes got 40,000 views.

Was TikTok broken? No. I was making videos I enjoyed creating, instead of videos the algorithm knows other people love to watch.

5 things give a video a push from the algorithm:

• Audience match. Does the video appeal to the people you want to reach?
• Platform preferences. Don't post at 3am, don't upload videos with another app's watermark, and keep the quality high.
• Engagement. This means likes, comments and shares.
• Watch time. Keep people watching for as long as possible.
• Trending elements. Use sounds and formats people already know.

Watch time is the most important of the five. You can fix the other four pretty easily, but if people swipe away after 2 seconds, nothing else matters.

To get people to watch until the end, and then follow you or stream your song, the video has to be good. I focus on three things: the quality, the hook and the juice.

Quality.

It's the first thing people notice when your video shows up in their feed. Film with your back camera at the highest quality, use natural sunlight, and keep your head in the center of the screen with space above and below for text.

The hook.

The first 3 seconds decide whether someone keeps watching or scrolls past. Create curiosity, emotion or surprise, the three things that make people stay. If you can do all three at once, they'll almost always keep watching.

The juice.

This is everything that comes after the hook. Is the song you're performing good enough? Do you pay off the curiosity you created at the start? Did you make people laugh, or cry? Did you tell them to stream your song?

Look, I know you want to focus on music. You don't want to wake up every day and think about which video to film next to promote it. I get it, and it sucks. But if you want to build an audience you have to make content, and you have to get better at it for it to work.

I went deeper on this in 10 reasons nobody is watching your content.

Week 4: Turn views into fans

Now for one of the biggest mistakes every creator makes at least once. Yes, that includes you.

It starts with believing that more followers, likes or streams automatically mean progress. A lot of musicians think 10,000 followers make promoting music easier than 100 followers, and that isn't true.

Here's an example. I found a fantastic reel by a musician called Deja Re. It got almost 200,000 views in 4 days, with 16,000 likes and 400 comments.

I love finding artists before they blow up, so I went straight to her Spotify to support her music. Her Instagram views added up to more than 1 million, and she had 63 monthly listeners.

That's sixty-three monthly listeners from over a million views.

Why the views didn't turn into listeners:

• Mistake 1 was the wrong link in her bio. She had a direct Spotify link there, and on a lot of phones that link opens Spotify in the browser instead of the app, so people can't easily stream or save the song. A free smart link that opens the Spotify app directly could have brought her hundreds of extra listeners.
• Mistake 2 was only making discovery content. Most of her viewers don't even know she has music on Spotify, because she never mentions it. She needs to mix in content that sells, like performing her own songs, sharing clips from her shows, and telling people where to find her music.
• Mistake 3 was obsessing over numbers that don't mean anything. The fact that I even mentioned her million views shows we're all guilty of this. Views, likes and even comments mean nothing unless they convert.

How to turn views into fans:

Open your Instagram and TikTok insights. You'll find gold there about your audience: their gender, their age and where they're from.

Before you look, ask yourself three questions. What gender does my music appeal to most? What age range am I going after? Do I want to grow locally or all over the world?

Then compare your analytics with your answers.

If they match but you're not growing, you need more content that sells. Perform your own music, share videos from your shows, and keep telling people they can find your songs on Spotify.

If you're reaching the wrong people, it usually means you've been chasing numbers instead of the right audience. 100 views from your target audience are worth 1,000 times more than a million views from random people.

You can train the algorithm with captions like these:

• "If you're from [your city], let's connect"
• "I want to meet people who love [your genre] and [a related interest]"
• "If you like [genre], I'm your new favorite artist"
• "If you're [age range] and from [country], let's be friends"

Your views might drop at first. But the more specific you get about who you want to attract, the faster the algorithm learns who to show your videos to. And then you grow fans, and not only numbers.

That's the whole plan. Week 1 is your mindset, week 2 is the right mix of content, week 3 is videos people watch until the end, and week 4 is turning those views into fans. If you want a push to keep going after the 28 days, The 100K Challenge is a free 10-day challenge I run.

Three content ideas to try this month

Past you vs today.

Dig into your old camera roll and find the cringe videos. Show a few clips of yourself from years ago, then cut to recent videos of you doing what you love now. It shows your journey, and people love a good glow-up story.

One word at a time.

Put your lyrics on screen one word at a time. This format has been around forever, and with the right song it works very well. CapCut can generate the lyrics for you, and some of its free templates show the words one by one.

Explaining your lyrics to your dad.

Film yourself explaining the lyrics of your song to one of your parents, line by line, while they listen and react. It's intimate, and it gives people a look at your music and your family at the same time. And when a parent asks questions or gets confused, the comedy happens on its own.

If you want more ideas like these, The Content Vault has 308 content ideas with examples, a planner and AI captions.