How to make TikTok Trends Your Own

Trends on TikTok and Reels are constantly changing - and, if you’ve listened to any TikTok or Instagram growth advice lately, then you’ll know just how important following these trends can be to increasing your reach, and seeing explosive growth on your account. But, here’s the link about these trends: you can’t just straight up copy a trend when you come across it on your For You Page. You need to find some way to make it unique, make it engaging, and make it your own. That’s why in today’s episode, I’m going to be taking you through my strategy for making TikTok trends your own. This is truly the key to taking advantage of current trends, being able to batch a high volume of TikToks and Reels, and keeping your account active and growing. Let’s get into it!

The Difference Between TikTok and Reels

Before we get into the strategy for making trending TikToks your own, I feel like I need to offer a disclaimer that I often offer whenever talking about TikToks. Moving forward, I want you to know when I’m talking about this you can almost always use TikTok and Reels interchangeably. At this point in time, when I’m recording in early 2022 - TikTok and Reels (for the most part) have the same trends in terms of audio and music. Yes, there are some subtle differences in the culture and trends on these platforms, which I actually got into in-depth in my previous episode Reels vs TikTok - How to really grow using Instagram Reels. So listen to that episode if you’re curious to learn more about the little details there. But for the most part, I want you to know that in terms of short-form videos that you’re making, you can post them in both places, and this video is going to be a guide to turning both TikTok and Reels trends into your own unique piece. Okay? I hope that makes sense. Just know that the advice I’m going to share today applies to both.

How to find TikTok and Reels Trends

Especially if you’re new to making TikToks and Reels, you probably know that trends exist, and it’s beneficial to follow them to increase your reach. But, you might not know where to find them. To get started, these are the four main places where you can discover new trends:

on your For You Page
on the TikTok discover tab
on the Instagram @creators page
the little arrow on an Instagram Reels audio (when you’re scrolling, you may notice a little arrow in the bottom left corner, that indicates that a Reel audio is trending)

How to know when a trend is right for you

Just because you come across a trend, doesn’t mean that using that audio or format is going to be right for you. It’s important, in your TikTok or Reels journey, that you learn to distinguish which trends suit your brand and your audience, and which you should pass on. Here are a few questions you might want to ask yourself when you come across a potential trend:

Does the music suit your brand?

Think about your ideal audience, and what they might expect to see on their FYP. Just because an audio came upon your For You Page, doesn’t mean it would appear on theirs. Does the music feel too serious, or maybe too juvenile? Is it a genre of music that you know your audience won’t like or recognize? Or is it too niche? - maybe your audience isn’t on berries and cream TikTok... These are the types of things you need to consider before jumping on an audio trend.

Does a relatable scenario (i.e. potential text to add to your version of the trend) come to mind right away or does it feel like a stretch?

We’ll get into the whole process for coming up with your own version of the trend next- but sometimes, if you really think hard about it and still can’t figure out how you would apply it to your own niche, then it might not be right for you.

Are other people in your niche using the audio?

Usually, this is a good indication that your ideal audience might also be seeing this trend and connecting with it. Some Reels and TikTok trends are only popular in certain subgenres or niches - and it might happen that you’re on a slightly different side of TikTok than your followers. So, if other folks in your niche are using the audio you find, that probably means that your audience would also recognize it and connect with it.

Making a TikTok trend your own

Let’s use some examples to illustrate this because I think that will be the best way to explain it. I’ll take you through the process that I use when I come across a trend audio.

For this first example, we’ll use this audio from All to Well by Taylor Swift.

In this trend, we see people using text on the screen to describe some sort of strange or out of the ordinary trait, either in themselves or someone they know, and then they act out their reaction to this behavior while lipsyncing the words “oh my god, she’s insane”

So, when you first come across an audio like this, you might have found it on your For You Page, or maybe it’s the first one you’re watching on the Discover page. The first step is figuring out how you’re going to make it your own is watching more examples.

This will give you a better sense of how other people are approaching it, and you might just come across a certain angle or idea that will help you make up your own.

So some examples from this particular trend that I found when I went to browse the audio on TikTok were:

“Watching her take a photo of the unplugged curling iron before we leave the house”

“Everyone when they find out I’ve been playing with the same Sims family since 2015”

“Me telling my non-NYC friends that we can walk because it’s only 40 minutes away”

So, you start to get the idea - you need to come up with something niche, yet somehow also relatable. And this is the case for many TikTok audio trends, not just this one. The key to grabbing the attention of your viewers is sharing an experience that is specific, yet relatable. And I’ll admit that is a difficult balance to strike because you can’t just go for generic - that’s not interesting, even if it is relatable. But if you go too specific into your own experience, it might not be relatable. In a lot of cases with these trends, you need to go out on a limb a little bit, and share something personal - and hope that someone else might have felt the same way.

So, once you get a sense of how the format of the trend works, it’s time to come up with some ideas for how you might approach it. I reccomend writing down several ideas - they can just be rough concepts at this point, we’ll refine them later.

Thinking for myself here, if I was going to replicate this trend I would start writing down ideas of weird or funny things that I do that might just make other people think I’m crazy. For example:

me making a google sheets itinerary for a casual weekend trip (because I do that sometimes)
me bursting out laughing at the most random things just because my little brother said them
me getting over-enthusiastic about Outlander
when I go on a tangent about the latest Youtube drama to people who have no idea who I’m talking about
when someone tells me they want to start a youtube channel and I absolutely go off

Okay, looking back on this really rough list - there are some solid ideas here. There are probably a few that other people would relate to - people who are also Type A or people with funny little brothers. At this point in the creative process, you want to start thinking about which of these would be most ideal for your niche and for your audience. For me - the one about starting a YouTube channel makes the most sense because in some of my content I teach people how to start YouTube channels, and this content might attract my ideal audience - hopefully it reaches people who are aspiring YouTube creators.

Now that I’ve chosen the best concept I came up with, it’s time to refine the writing. I want to make sure that the way I phrase this in my text is really clear and to the point, and hopefully a bit funny. This is basically my one chance to capture attention in this TikTok, so I want to make it good.

So instead of:

when someone tells me they want to start a youtube channel and I absolutely go off

I’ll change it to:

When someone tells me they want to start a YouTube channel and I come up with a million video ideas for them

I think that is a bit more clear and specific - and hopefully communicates the idea better to my viewers.

Once I’ve landed on this idea, I can finally go ahead and film my TikTok - for audios like this, it’s really easy because the main task is simply just lipsyncing. If you have a creative idea - maybe you’re taking inspiration from some of the videos you saw when browsing the sound - you can add a slightly different visual component. But for the most part with these lipsync type trends - it’s all about adding clever and relatable text.

So that is the process of making a lip-sync style TikTok trend your own. I think you’ll find as you practice this that you will get faster and faster - you might find that the steps I laid out start to fold into one - because you won’t have to refine your writing, you might just come up with a clear phrase from the start. And I’m sure you’ll start to ideate mostly around your niche as well. When it comes to this style of humor and content creation, a big part of it really is practice.

How to develop a TikTok Style

Now that we’re clear on how you can find a trend audio, and make it your own, let’s discuss strategies for developing a TikTok or Reels style, or, in other words: creating some brand recognition in your TikToks or Reels.

Here’s the deal: you can pretty easily create a whole selection of very random TikToks or Reels, and chances are at least some of them will get a wider reach, breakthrough to the FYP or explore page, and get some views. But, if you want to be able to get views more consistently, and establish your brand with a new audience, it’s important to integrate some visual (and otherwise) branding into your videos.

Here are a few suggestions for how you can make your TikToks or Reels feel on-brand:

Use the same filters or effects
Film in a few consistent backgrounds
Wear your brand colors in your videos

These are just a few ways that you can start to make your videos feel familiar to your audience. Ideally, your videos will pop up in their feed, and right away, your followers will think “oh yeah, that’s Katie’s video” - it also has the side benefit of making your feed seem more cohesive and provides new visitors to your profile a nice polished preview of your brand and what you offer.

How to integrate trends into your Tiktok and Reels strategy

I recently posted a video on YouTube (above) talking about growing on TikTok in 2022. In this video, I talked about my posting strategy for 2022 and how my goal is to have 20 posts planned and scheduled, but then plan to post spontaneous content throughout the month as trends seem to be taking off. I think this is a great way to both have the ability to batch create for TikTok, but also have the opportunity to jump on trends as they surface on the platform. With this strategy, you can both integrate evergreen content and trends into your TikTok and Reel strategy but also be on top of those short-term trends as well. Just remember, not all Reels need to go viral (though wouldn’t that be nice)! As long as you focus on providing value and consistency to your audience, the rest will come in time!