How to Get Your Next Idea Using TikTok's Creator Search Insights

If you’ve ever been stumped for ideas on what to post on TikTok, you’re not alone. Our own audience at Buffer often tells us that ideas are a major barrier to content creation for them.

Well, it looks like TikTok heard our cries and created a tool to address this specific issue: Creator Search Insights. This tool is a game changer and is extremely valuable for both creators and brands looking to grow on the platform.

In this article, I share what you need to know about TikTok’s Creator Search Insights tool, as well as some ideas for making the most of this feature.

What is TikTok’s Creator Search Insights tool?

The Creator Search Insights tool is an innovative feature within the TikTok platform that provides insights (of course) into what people are searching for on TikTok.

Using Creator Search Insights, you can find ideas to help you create tailored content strategies and share content that your audience actually wants to see.

Here are the specific ways that the TikTok Creator Search Insights tool can be valuable for crafting impactful material:

• Identifying underserved topics and creating content that addresses them
• Engaging with trending conversations with ease
• Harnessing potent keywords for your captions and hashtags to boost TikTok SEO

It’s especially valuable because you can take action and create content immediately after you find an idea that speaks to you — and TikTok rewards you by surfacing that content to your audience in search and the TikTok algorithm.

How does Creator Search Insights affect the Creator Rewards Program?

TikTok has stated that the search value of a creator’s content will be a deciding factor in how much they can make from the Creator Rewards Program.

Essentially, if you make a video that’s high in demand or recommended by TikTok, you have a higher chance of getting engagement and more monetization opportunities from TikTok.

How TikTok Creator Search Insights works

To get started using TikTok Creator Search Insights, simply enter the term “creator search insights” into the search bar and tap View.

Within this feature, topics are neatly organized into Suggested and Trending.

Under Suggested, you’ll find two categories:

• Content gap: Topics are searched for often, but aren't featured in a large number of videos on TikTok
• Searches by followers: Topics that your followers are searching for – you’ll only see this if you have more than 1000 followers.

The Trending topics tab gives you even more information, as it surfaces topics searched outside of your niche in different categories from Tourism to Science.

This categorization allows you to sift through topics outside of your niche for ideas that you may be able to adapt to your own.

You can remove irrelevant search topics by long-pressing the topic you’d like to remove. You can also report the topic if it's inappropriate.

Additionally, you can access Search Analytics and then Inspired posts, to see how your posts – specifically the ones you’ve created by clicking through to the creation area from Search Insights – are performing. You can also see how your overall content is performing in TikTok search.

Each subject within the creator search insights has an associated Search popularity score, a Recommended label, or a red percentage marker that shows its rapid growth within a 14-day period.

These metrics allow you to make strategic decisions about what the themes that could amplify viewership and interaction with your videos when included in searches.

How to use Creator Search Insights for content creation

The easiest way to use Creator Search Insights is to start from the Content gap, i.e., what your audience wants to see but can’t really find on TikTok.

The ideas in the Content gap are ideally the perfect intersection of what your audience wants, what’s popular and what similar accounts to yours are posting.

Even better, you can dig into the Related searches under the search terms in your Content gap and tap on those keywords to find more new ideas, and so on. 

If you don’t have any idea of where to start, then you might have better luck in the Trending tab. Here, you can find keywords categorized into different niches: Fashion, Food, Sports, Tourism, Gaming and Science.

Additionally, you can search a term more specific to you – that might be “Social media management” if you’re like us at Buffer or “Bread making tutorial” if you’re a bakery. It’ll pop up a bunch of content relevant to your search term with all the same information as if you’d found it on the Search Insights homepage.

If you’d like to work on content for a particular term later, you can also bookmark it by tapping on the icon in the top right corner of a keyword page. You’ll find all your bookmarks on the homepage of Creator Search Insights, in the top-right corner.

How to create a post directly from a Creator Search Insights keyword

Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create a post directly from a keyword:

1. Tap the video button next to the keyword you want to use
2. Film or upload the content you’d like to post, whether it be a video, photo, or TikTok carousel
3. Make sure you pop the keyword into your content somewhere — whether in the caption or an out-of-the-way spot right in your post

Finally, while it should be added automatically if you create your video straight from the TikTok Creator Search Insights homepage, make sure you always add the hashtag #creatorsearchinsights to your posts when drafting your caption. 

Put TikTok’s Creator Search Insights tool to work

Thanks to TikTok’s Creator Search, you have a higher chance of achieving two things: (1) creating viral content that (2) actually resonates with your audience. However, Insights can only grow your account significantly if you actually create the content.

So, instead of looking for the hottest trend to hop on, focus on putting out content consistently. Make sure you’re watching both your analytics as well as monitoring your audience’s reaction to your content. It’s vital that you know how your videos are performing so you can tweak your approach where necessary.