TikTok is the only platform where an account with a hundred followers can be shown to a million people, because the feed judges the video rather than the account behind it. That is a genuinely unusual offer. The price is a 48-hour shelf life and a posting cadence that does not let up. This is one section of a larger piece; the full comparison table puts all nine channels side by side.
TikTok can take 100 followers to a million views, for daily posting
TikTok is the mirror image of YouTube. It gives away cold reach more freely than anywhere else, and takes it back the moment you stop:
- The best cold reach on the internet. The For You feed distributes on behaviour (finishes, rewatches, shares) and almost entirely ignores follower relationships for new content. A 100-follower account can hit a million views, and mid-tier creators get 70 to 90% of their views from non-followers. Nothing else here comes close on pure discovery.
- TikTok's 18,000 average views hides a far harsher median. That headline hides a harsh floor: the average of about 18,000 views is inflated by viral outliers, and the true median video gets hundreds to low thousands. Worse, average views for small accounts fell about 23% from 2024 to 2025.
- A TikTok can be made in under an hour on a phone. Many TikToks are made in under an hour on a phone with in-app editing and a trending sound. The skill and gear bar is the lowest of any video platform here.
- The cadence is punishing. TikTok itself recommends 1 to 4 posts a day; sustainably growing creators post 4 to 6 times a week minimum. Volume is the strategy, which is the real cost.
- A first 1,000 TikTok followers has been done in under a month. First 1,000 followers has been done in under a month, though several months is more typical. A single hit can deliver in days what YouTube takes months to build, but it is unreliable.
- A TikTok's half-life is days, because the feed prioritises the last 48 hours. The feed prioritises the last ~48 hours, and a post's half-life is effectively zero outside of virality. There is some search re-distribution, but nothing like YouTube. It is a treadmill, not a library.
- Conversion is decent for a feed platform, with a catch. Link-in-bio converts at about 3.4%, the best of the feed platforms and more than double Instagram's, but links open in TikTok's in-app browser where the user is not logged in and tracking often breaks. Great for cheap awareness and impulse clicks, weak for considered purchases.
Use Repeat Recorder to rehearse your TikTok opening line
TikTok asks for one to four posts a day and judges the video rather than the account behind it, so every upload has to win its audience from nothing. What decides that is the first few seconds of talking, and it is the one part of a phone video nobody practises. Repeat Recorder, one of my own apps, records you and plays the take straight back without you touching the phone.
- Repeat Recorder plays every take back automatically and then starts recording again, so the same opening line can be run twenty times without picking the phone up. That hands-free loop is the whole app. It was built for people drilling a phrase in a new language, and rehearsing the start of a video is the same job with different words.
- A TikTok is often made in under an hour on a phone, which makes the talking the cheapest part of that hour to improve. The For You feed distributes on finishes, rewatches and shares, and mid-tier creators get 70 to 90% of their views from people who do not follow them, so no follower count rescues a video that people leave at the start.
- Takes worth keeping go into favourites and into folders you name yourself, which is what a week of daily posting needs. The folders reorder by dragging, so a batch of openings recorded in one sitting can be put into the order you plan to film them in.
Conclusion: whether TikTok is worth growing, in one glance
- TikTok's For You feed ranks each video on finishes, rewatches and shares rather than on your follower count, so a 100 follower account can be shown to a million people. Accounts of ordinary size get 70 to 90% of their views from people who do not follow them, the best discovery of the nine channels compared here.
- TikTok's headline average of 18,000 views hides a typical video that gets only hundreds to low thousands, and average views for small accounts fell about 23% from 2024 to 2025. One hit can deliver in days what YouTube takes months to build, but the ordinary upload does not, so plan on the typical video rather than the average.
- Only start growing TikTok if you can post four to six times a week, because the feed prioritises the last 48 hours and carries a video almost nowhere after that. Use it for cheap awareness and impulse clicks, where the link in your bio is tapped through at about 3.4%, and send considered purchases down a path that does not end in TikTok's in-app browser, where the buyer is not logged in and tracking often breaks.