How to go viral on TikTok: what the algorithm reads

Going viral on TikTok is less random than it looks. That is the argument of a guide published by Shopify, built on advice from Kenzie Epperson, social media strategist and co-founder of Content Bar. Most of what it recommends is decided at the edit, before anything is posted.

What follows retells Jason Cother's guide, updated on 21 July 2026, in our own words, with the editing side pulled forward.

What the algorithm reads

TikTok's For You feed is a recommendation system, and the guide sorts its signals into three groups, from heaviest to lightest:

1. How viewers react. Watch time, completion, replays, shares, saves, comments and likes. Signals of real interest, such as watching to the end, weigh most.
2. What the video contains. Sounds, hashtags, captions, the country it was posted from. TikTok works more and more like a search engine: its newsroom reported a 40% rise in searches from 2024 to 2025, and a video that clearly answers a question can surface in search and then in feeds.
3. Who is watching, on what. Language, location, device, time zone. These tune the recommendation but weigh least.

Following matters less than people think. According to Dash Social, cited by Shopify, the share of views coming from non-followers rose from 31% in 2023 to 58% by the end of 2025. A small account can go viral; the feed judges the video, not the follower count.

of views from non-followers, end of 2025

58%

the same share in 2023

31%

searches on TikTok, 2024 to 2025

+40%

to land the hook

2–3 s

Four ways in

• Hook in two to three seconds. Epperson treats curiosity from the first frame as a requirement: a surprising fact, a question, a claim that cuts against what people assume. An opinion beats an introduction. Poppi opened a video with on-screen text telling viewers not to drink its soda, then gave the reasons; it drew more than 56,000 likes.
• Answer a trend in your own voice. Olive oil brand Graza replied to teacher Courtney Cook's viral sweet potato video with a joke about its own office: 91,000 likes, 6,000 shares.
• Make it worth sending. The test is whether someone would forward it to a friend. Recipes pass it easily: Olipop's "dirty soda dot cake" became one of its most-shared videos of 2026, with nearly 4,000 shares.
• Lead with the story, not the product. Cookware brand Made In filmed chef Anthony Wang talking about food memories while he cooks; the pans are on screen throughout, the story is the point. More than 182,000 likes.

Turning one hit into a habit

The guide's best-practice list is about repeatability: build a series or a pool of creators so there is always something ready (Dieux answers viewer comments on camera), test more hooks and formats instead of polishing one, work with creators who actually use the product, give viewers a next step, and put the words your audience searches for in the caption, on screen and out loud.

Our take: it's an editing brief

Read as a checklist, almost every item is a cut decision. The hook is the first two seconds you keep. Completion is how long you let the clip run. Searchable words on screen are captions. Testing more hooks means cutting the same moment several ways. We cover those decisions in what makes a moment clippable, how long a clip should be and burned-in captions or a subtitle file. This section is ours.

Sources

• Shopify, Jason Cother, How To Go Viral on TikTok: Understanding the Algorithm for 2026, updated 21 July 2026: read the article. The advice, examples and figures above come from it, including those it attributes to Kenzie Epperson, TikTok's newsroom and Dash Social.
• The last section is ours.