I Never Get More Than 200 Views For My TikToks. Why?

Lots of TikTok videos get lots of views. Popular content creators get thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of views. And as you scroll your feed, you see numerous TikTok posts with enormous numbers of likes, comments, and shares.

Then why do so many people find that no matter how much TikTok content they upload, it always seems that their view count rises to about 200 — and stops?

If you’re struggling with this problem, we’re here to reassure you: it’s not just you. It’s a common issue that many creators struggle with.

What’s the reason for the 200-view barrier, and how do you get past it to build a large audience and greater engagement with your content? Read on.

Why Do My TikTok Views Stop Around 200?

As with many other growth issues on the social media platform, the simple answer comes down to three words: the TikTok algorithms.

Two of the algorithms’ most important functions are judging the popularity and importance of videos, and using those determinations to decide how much visibility they deserve on TikTok users’ feeds. To do those jobs, the algos rely heavily on TikTok analytic metrics; the more engagement a video receives from its viewers, the more exposure it will receive.

The theory is simple. If content is compelling enough to keep people watching and get them to like, comment, and share, it’s probably worth showing to a larger number of surfers across the platform.

In a nutshell, the process starts with a “test audience.” The algorithms show your post to a few hundred people on their For You pages (FYPs) and then look at how well the video performed. Two of those metrics matter most:

• Watch Time: The total amount of time (measured in watch hours) viewers spent watching your video.
• Engagement Rate: How often viewers liked, shared, reposted, and commented on the video.

Watch time measures how involved people get with your content. Very little watch time is recorded if they move on after just a few seconds, indicating that “they’re just not into you.” The longer they watch, the greater the evidence that your video is good enough to get them “hooked.” The algorithms may conclude that other viewers will feel the same way.

A high engagement rate shows that people were so impressed with your post that they felt compelled to spend extra time giving it a like, a share, or a comment. Again, that’s a sign that other surfers will be just as impressed.

Once the audience test is complete, the algorithms pause your exposure on the FYP and evaluate your video. If the metrics are good enough, your posts will be shown to larger audiences and your view count will keep rising. If your video fails the test, though, it won’t be displayed to random users and your view total will stay around the 200 mark virtually forever.

It’s important to understand that hitting the 200-view limit time after time doesn’t necessarily mean that your content isn’t high-quality or well-produced.

Users won’t spend much time with poor videos, of course. But if you believe your posts are as good as (or better than) many of the ones you see on your For You feed, the problems are probably very different: you’re not appealing to the right target audience, or you’re not enticing viewers to watch for a significant amount of time.

Creating TikTok Content That Works

We’ll assume that you’re a content creator who produces good-quality and interesting or compelling videos. If that doesn’t describe you, quite honestly, you shouldn’t expect to receive many views for your posts.

So, let’s move on to the other variables we’ve mentioned.

Finding a Target Audience

Most successful TikTok influencers and creators have become popular and important on the app by focusing on a single topic. In almost all cases, it’s a subject about which they’re passionate and knowledgeable; that dedication allows them to provide content that delivers strong value to other like-minded TikTok users.

That means all of your videos should focus on your chosen topic or niche. Not everyone will be interested in the subject matter, of course, but they’ll just scroll right by. The people who are interested are the ones that matter; they’ll watch your content all the way to the end, and then comment, like, and share — boosting both your watch time and engagement rates.

When you focus on a single topic and produce exceptional video, you’ll be showing the algorithms that almost everyone who stopped to watch was fully involved in your content — convincing the algos to keep increasing your audience. You’ll blow right past the 200-view threshold in no time.

Enticing Viewers to Stop and Watch

It takes just a second or so to scroll past a TikTok post that doesn’t “demand” that you check it out. Taking affirmative action to make potential viewers realize that you’ve created “must-watch” content is crucial if you want your target audience to stop and watch what you’ve produced.

There are many elements you can use to do that:

• An intriguing caption and splashy graphics will immediately grab users’ attention.
• The use of teases and “calls-to-action” (CTAs) can capture users’ attention enough to get them to stop and view your video. Teases and similar approaches also work well throughout a video’s content, since they’ll keep people interested and increase watch time.
• The proper use of keywords in your post description, relevant hashtags, and trending hashtags will bring in TikTok search viewers interested in your topic.
• Length matters; short, concise, and fascinating videos are almost always more successful on the app than longer ones.

Creating TikTok content is easy with the tools the platform provides, convincing many users that it’s simple to churn out videos and have them seen by lots of people. Getting through the 200-view test period is much tougher than it appears, though.

Putting thought and effort into building a target audience, and doing everything possible to entice viewers to watch, can make the difference between disappointment and TikTok success.