How to Create Educational Content on TikTok

Identify an educational niche, research trending topics, script lessons in a friendly conversational tone, use visuals and text overlays, promote engagement through questions and polls. The key is concise, bite-sized content that simplifies complex topics for quick comprehension.

Why Create Educational Content on TikTok?

TikTok is known primarily for entertainment, comedy, and music. But there is a huge opportunity to stand out by providing educational value instead. Here are some key reasons why you should create educational content on TikTok:

Reach a Massive Audience Hungry for Learning

The sheer size of TikTok’s user base presents a massive opportunity. You can expose your educational content to over 1 billion monthly users, many of whom are eager to learn new skills and information. TikTok’s algorithm makes it possible for your content to go viral seemingly overnight too!

Establish Yourself as an Expert in Your Niche

By consistently creating helpful how-to’s, explainers, and other educational content in your niche, you can build authority and establish yourself as a subject matter expert. This helps you gain credibility and trust with viewers.

Educational Content Tends to Be Evergreen

Unlike trendy entertainment content, educational content has a longer shelf life. Solid educational content often continues to generate views and engagement over time. This helps you build up your TikTok account.

Help and Engage People

At its core, educational content aims to teach viewers valuable skills or information. You can help people expand their knowledge and capabilities through your TikTok videos. This is inherently rewarding!

Clearly there is tremendous value in creating educational content for TikTok. But first, let’s look at how to identify the right niche and target audience.

Determine Your Niche and Target Audience

To create effective educational content, you need to have a specific niche and target audience in mind. Here are some tips:

Research Underserved Educational Niches

Look for educational topics and skills that are popular search terms but don’t have much content yet on TikTok. The competition will be lower so your videos can more easily rank.

Define Your Target Audience

Get very specific – who exactly do you want to teach? Their age, interests, career goals, etc. Tailor your content accordingly. Teachers, students, professionals, hobbyists all learn differently.

Consider These Potential Target Audiences:

College students looking to learn practical skills
Busy parents trying to help kids with remote learning
Job seekers wanting to learn in-demand skills
Crafters/DIYers wanting to master new techniques
Pet owners needing training tips

Once you identify an educational niche and target audience with opportunity, it’s time to create awesome content!

Best Practices for Creating Educational TikTok Videos

TikTok has unique formatting that you should keep in mind for educational videos. Here are some best practices:

Keep Videos Concise

Aim for 30 seconds to 2 minutes max. Quick, bite-sized lessons work best on TikTok. You can always link to more in-depth content.

Use Simple Visuals

Charts, screenshots, drawings, etc help simplify complex topics. Show don’t tell!

Add Text for Key Points

Text overlays let you reinforce instructions, definitions, tips etc. This improves comprehension and recall.

Leverage Trending Audios

Using trending audios/effects related to your niche helps more people find your educational content.

Promote Engagement

Ask viewers questions and have them comment with their biggest takeaways. This boosts the algorithm.

By following these best practices, you can create fun, engaging TikTok videos that effectively teach viewers. But what types of educational content should you make?

How to Create Educational Content on TikTok

Types of Educational Content to Create

There are endless possibilities for educational content formats to experiment with:

Explainers

Explainers are short videos that teach viewers about a particular concept, idea, theory, or framework in a straightforward, easy-to-digest way. They break down complex topics into the core basics that are essential for understanding. Explainers work well for teaching scientific concepts, management principles, key historical events, and more.

How-Tos

How-to videos walk viewers step-by-step through how to do something hands-on. This format works incredibly well for teaching practical skills like cooking, home repairs, arts and crafts, fitness routines, coding tutorials and more. Use clear instructions, text overlays and visuals to simplify each step.

Listicles

Listicle videos deliver valuable information in quick, easily consumable formats like “5 Ways to Study More Effectively” or “10 Essential Cooking Tips.” These bite-sized lessons use lists, counters, and fast facts to teach viewers. They add variety to your content.

Q&As

Q&A videos are a great format to address and clear up the most common questions or misconceptions people have about a topic. Turn search queries into valuable explainers that provide context. Ask genuine questions your audience may have and give thoughtful answers.

Interviews

Interview videos feature you talking one-on-one with an expert like a teacher, doctor, career professional, celebrity or influencer about their work and expertise. This provides insider information from credible sources to educate your audience in an engaging way.

Experiments

For scientific, engineering, and medical topics, demonstrating experiments is an impactful educational format. Show viewers an experiment, construction project, surgery, recipe, etc. step-by-step with thorough explanation.

Using a variety of content types and formats will keep your TikTok content library diverse, fresh and engaging for your audience.

Promote Your TikToks to Reach More People

Creating amazing educational content is only half the battle. You also need to promote your TikToks to get them in front of more viewers. Here are some top promotion tactics:

Use Relevant Hashtags

Hashtags are essential for discovery on TikTok. Include a mix of 5-10 popular general hashtags like #learnontiktok, #education, #DIY, #howtowithme along with very niche-specific tags directly related to your content topic and keywords. This helps the right audience find and engage with your educational content.

Post at Optimal Times

Pay close attention to when your target audience is most active on TikTok and aim to post your content during those high traffic times. For example, if you want to reach high school students, early evenings on weekdays may see higher engagement. Analyze your past analytics and experiment with timing to determine optimal posting times.

Cross-Promote Across Social Media

Don’t just post your TikToks to TikTok! Share them across all of your other social media accounts like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube etc. to expand your reach. Social media cross-promotion is a free, effective way to get your TikToks in front of more of your existing audience on other platforms. Just make sure to customize the caption for the platform.

Run TikTok Ads

As your budget allows, consider running TikTok ad campaigns to get your educational videos in front of large targeted audiences. TikTok’s powerful analytics allow you to really fine tune your targeting.

Start with interest and follower look-alike targeting then optimize based on performance. Even a small daily ad budget can drive results.

Collaborate with Niche Influencers

Find and connect with other TikTok creators in your educational niche to collaborate on videos and cross-promote each other’s content. This allows you to tap into their audience and vice versa.

Try collabing on a quick educational TikTok tutorial or hosting an educational livestream together.

Track Performance and Optimize

Like any marketing initiative, you need to analyze the performance of your educational content and constantly refine it. Here are some tips:

Pay Attention to Engagement Metrics

Monitor likes, comments, shares, views etc to see which topics and formats resonate most.

Ask for Viewer Feedback

Ask what else they want to learn about related to your niche. User-generated content ideas!

Continuously Improve

Use feedback and insights to keep refining your content style, topics, promotion, etc. Always be experimenting!

By regularly tracking analytics and optimizing based on what’s working, you can create educational content that delivers incredible value on TikTok.

Now you have a complete blueprint for successfully creating educational content on TikTok! Let’s quickly recap:

Identify an educational niche and target audience
Use best practices tailored to TikTok’s format
Experiment with explainer videos, how-tos, listicles, Q&As, interviews
Promote TikToks with hashtags, optimal timing, cross-promotion
Analyze performance and constantly optimize

As you can see, creating educational content for TikTok has huge potential but requires some strategic planning. Use these tips to establish yourself as a subject matter expert while helping and engaging viewers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I come up with ideas for educational TikTok videos?

Look at popular searches and questions in your niche to find gaps. Ask your audience what they want to learn. Explore trending topics and current events you can add value to.

What if I’m not an expert on a topic?

Focus on fundamental concepts and best practices you can teach as a knowledgeable enthusiast. You don’t need fancy degrees to educate on TikTok!

How do I script an educational TikTok video?

Keep it conversational and friendly. Use simple language. Break key points into short lines. Add text overlays. Script it as you would explain to a friend.

What editing apps do I need for educational TikToks?

Basic apps like VN, Inshot, CapCut allow you to insert text, images, trim clips, add music/voiceover and more to create polished videos.

How much time does it take to create educational content?

It varies but plan for 1-3 hours per video between ideation, scripting, recording, editing, drafting captions etc. The more you create, the more efficient you’ll get.

Should I use hashtags on educational TikToks?

Definitely – hashtags help people interested in your topic discover the video. Just don’t go overboard. Stick to 5-10 relevant niche and popular hashtags.

Conclusion

I hope this overview gave you ideas and inspiration around educational content on TikTok. Let me know if you have any other questions! I’m always happy to chat more about optimizing your TikTok strategy.

Creating educational content on TikTok is a tremendously rewarding way to help and engage an audience of eager learners. By identifying an underserved niche, optimizing for TikTok’s unique format, constantly refining your content, and relentlessly promoting it, you can establish yourself as a subject matter expert.

The opportunity to provide value to others while growing your own brand makes it all worthwhile. So what are you waiting for? Grab your phone, brainstorm some ideas, and start creating educational TikToks that captivate and educate!

Let’s get connected today! to get step-by-step guidance on optimizing your TikTok strategy.