Using TikTok APIs, you can acquire valuable intelligence, elevate your methods for gaining followers, and interact with your audience more effectively.

In this blog, we will guide you step-by-step on leveraging TikTok API to harness the power of follower acquisition and engagement.

Understanding the Value of TikTok Followers

Source: similarweb.com

With its explosive growth and vast user base, TikTok has become a powerful platform for individuals and businesses to connect, engage, and build a loyal following. TikTok followers hold immense value as they represent a dedicated audience that actively consumes and shares content.

Here are key pointers highlighting the significance of follower count and its impact on influencer credibility, brand partnerships, and overall marketing success:

1. Credibility Boost: A large follower count enhances an influencer's credibility within their niche. It signifies industry leadership and expertise, making their content and recommendations more influential.
2. Expanded Reach: Influencers with a large following offer brands exposure to a vast audience. This increased reach can significantly boost brand visibility and generate valuable impressions, maximizing the potential impact of collaborations.
3. Attracting Brand Partnerships: Influencers boasting a significant follower base are highly sought-after for collaborations. Brands recognize that their followers align with their target demographics, making creating sponsored content and endorsements and forming diverse partnerships easier.
4. Financial Value: The financial worth of TikTok followers is evident in influencer marketing payouts. Companies are willing to invest substantial resources in influencers based on their follower count, highlighting the direct financial impact of having a robust follower base.
5. Social Proof and Trust: Followers on social media platforms serve as social proof. Having a large, engaged follower count builds trust among the audience. This increased trust leads to higher brand loyalty, engagement rates, and more conversions, benefiting both influencers and the brands they collaborate with.

TikTok API: What does it mean?

TikTok provides an open API to developers who intend to integrate TikTok into your applications. Access to TikTok API can help you develop features in your application, such as sharing videos straight from your application to TikTok, embedding the TikTok videos onto your website, uploading or downloading videos, etc. 

Understanding TikTok analytics will also help you see follower growth, video views, comments, and shares over a custom date range. This lets you understand a video performance and get deeper insights into a creator’s audience set. 

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How does TikTok API work?

Getting access to TikTok’s API is a bit cumbersome. You will have to register as a developer, create an app and get your app authorized to get an access token used to make API calls. 

Step 1: Create an account

1. Go to TikTok for developers portal. 

Note: If you have completed the signup process, click Log in and enter the service. If not follow the below-mentioned steps

2. Click Sign Up and enter your email address. Press Send PIN to the email.
3. Check your inbox for the OTP sent from TikTok. Enter the code and verify your developer account. 
4. Once you have verified your email address, set a password to access your account securely.
5. Read and accept the TikTok developer terms and conditions. 

If you want to learn how to create an Influencer Marketing App for developers, check out our recipe page.‍

Step 2: Connect your application

To start working on your integration, you must first submit your application for the TikTok team to review and provide you access to the API and other software development tools. 

To connect your application and submit it for review, follow the steps below:

1. Click Manage Apps and choose to Connect an App. 
2. The App details, such as App ID, Client Secret, Client ID, and status of your application, can be found on the top.
3. Provide the name of the application you want to integrate with TikTok. Select the one that best describes your application’s purpose from the list of available categories. Upload your app icon. 
4. Describe what your app or website does and how it works

Click Submit for review, and in the pop-up window, explain why you need the API integration. After submitting your application for review, you may have to wait 3-4 days for approval. With the approval, you will be granted a Client Key to start working on your integration. 

Step 3: Complete the authorization

Under Manage Apps, you will find the Authorization URL in the app's information tab. Copy this URL and paste it into your browser window. You will be prompted to log into your TikTok account. You need to confirm the requested permissions, after which you will see the auth_code. 

Step 4: Obtain Access Token

1. You now need to get an access token for the TikTok API. Open up a command prompt window for Windows OS or a terminal for Mac OS and run the following command after replacing the values - app secret, app ID and auth_code: curl -H "Content-Type:application/json" -X POST -d "{\"secret\": \"APP SECRET\", \"app_id\": \"APP ID\", \"auth_code\": \"AUTH_CODE\"}" https://ads.tiktok.com/open_api/oauth2/access_token_v2/
2. Your access token will then be displayed in the response. Copy and paste the access token to a safe location. You may need it later.

Step 5: Choose a TikTok API endpoint

You can view the list of available TikTok API endpoints in the TikTok API documentation. You can now make API calls and receive the desired data. 

Learn more on How to Access Audience Demographics Data

Utilizing TikTok API for Detailed Insights

By integrating via API, you get access to first-party data of consented creators, including post login/private data. 

• User details: Use the /v2/user/info/ Display API to get a TikTok user's profile data 
• Views, impressions, and reach: Use /v2/video/list/ DIsplay API to get the metadata of a TikTok user's recently uploaded videos or /v2/video/query/ Display API to get the metadata of TikTok a user's videos filtered by video Id.

Each request will yield a JSON response with comprehensive data to satisfy your analytical needs.

Analyzing User Engagement Patterns

• Video Interaction Metrics: The API provides insights into user engagement with videos. You can access data on how many videos a user has uploaded, the number of views their videos have received, the engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares), and even the videos a user has interacted with. The API not only offers comprehensive data on user-generated content but also enables developers to analyze trends in video consumption patterns, including the increasing demand for tools to speed up videos, reflecting a growing preference for enhanced viewing experiences.
• Time and Frequency Analysis: By studying the times when users are most active and the frequency of their interactions, you can optimize the timing of your content releases and engagement strategies.
• Engagement Trends: By analyzing the types of videos a user engages with most frequently, you can gain insights into their preferences. For example, if a user consistently engages with fitness-related content, you can infer that they are interested in fitness and wellness.

Identifying User Preferences and Interests

• Hashtags and Content Themes: Analyzing the hashtags that users frequently engage with or include in their posts can reveal their interests and preferences. This data can be invaluable in crafting targeted campaigns centered around these themes.
• Following Behavior: The API allows you to access the list of users a profile follows. This information can give you insights into the users and accounts your target audience is interested in, helping you align your marketing efforts with their preferences.
• Comment Analysis: Analyzing user comments on videos can provide valuable context about their opinions, sentiments, and desires. This can be particularly useful for fine-tuning your content strategy and addressing user needs.

Challenges with direct integration with TikTok developer APIs for follower data

Even though API integration is the best possible method for data collection from TikTok, you may still face barriers when integrating directly using TikTok API:

• To access the TikTok Display API, you need to have A TikTok developer account, Approval for both a Login Kit and open API products, granted user.info.basic and video.list scopes for your app.
• After you equip yourself with the prerequisites mentioned above, you must integrate with the TikTok login kit to authorize and get an access token to get started. And to go live with your app, your business and app functionality must undergo an extensive review submission process.

• TikTok does not provide audience demographic data through direct API integrations. Hence accessing essential information about a creator’s audience, like their gender ratio, age distribution, and geographical locations, can be impossible.
• Developers must plug into other sources to enrich data such as audience demographics, video/audio track information, profile data, etc. This, in turn, adds to the cost and effort involved. 
• Management of user access tokens can be challenging on a larger scale. After a specified inactive period, the access token will expire or become invalid, and you will not be permitted to make requests on the API. 

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How Phyllo Can Help with TikTok APIs for Follower Details

Introducing Phyllo for TikTok API Integration

Phyllo is a beacon of simplicity and efficacy in social media data integration. It is an advanced tool that significantly streamlines the TikTok API integration process, transforming how you access follower details.

Developed as a product that scales social media platform integrations, Phyllo eliminates individual developers' need to build unique integrations. Instead, it provides a singular, easily-integrate API that connects with multiple social media platforms, including TikTok.

Benefits of using Phyllo to retrieve follower data

Detailed audience demographics data

Phyllo is an invaluable tool for obtaining detailed audience demographics data. This includes information such as age, gender, location, interests, and other relevant demographics. By understanding the characteristics of their audience, creators/brands can tailor their content and strategies to engage and attract their target audience effectively. 

Phyllo Connect SDK

The Phyllo Connect SDK is designed to make it incredibly easy for creators to get started. It prioritizes user-friendly features to ensure a smooth experience. 

Moreover, Phyllo goes the extra mile to prioritize the creator's control and consent over their account. When integrating social media platforms through the Connect SDK, Phyllo provides clear explanations and educates creators about the entire process and the data collected after a successful login. Creators are informed about the specific types of data the app will request and how it will be utilized. 

Users are prompted on-screen to confirm necessary permissions to build further trust, reinforcing the creator's confidence in Phyllo to handle their accounts and data securely.

Phyllo vs. Third-Party Aggregators for TikTok Data

• Since Phyllo directly integrates with the source platform, you can tap into first-party credible and accurate data on performance, videos, and audiences as TikTok provides. 
• Phyllo works in conjunction with source platforms, and thus the data accessed is far more reliable than those derived from data scraping.
• Phyllo provides webhooks that help you with automated notifications and data updates without requesting the data repeatedly. This saves you a lot of processing and bandwidth, which would go into polling for this data.
• Since TPAs manage millions of creators’ databases, the information may not be synced daily, and there can be a delay in routing the information. 

Wrapping up!

TikTok APIs do not offer a streamlined solution for accurately accessing follower information.

Phyllo simplifies and improves TikTok API integration, providing a user-friendly tool for retrieving follower data and gaining valuable insights.

By leveraging tools like Phyllo, influencers, and businesses can enhance their strategies, understand their audience better, and make data-driven decisions for success on the platform.

Want to explore Phyllo? Book a demo today!