Three days ago, July 14th, I was–weirdly–in the mood to put myself out there. Unlike my usual self, I was in the mood for marketing. It sounded fun. That journey led me to create a TikTok video about Shuffle Buddy.

Bizarrely, it took off.

The Successful Video

The video was just a product demo, but apparently it intruiged people enough to gain traction. The video starts with a hook, “If you’re a teacher who has to make seating charts, I’m about to change your life.” I go on to briefly demonstrate the functionality of Shuffle Buddy, throwing in a small amount of humor where possible (leading to a lovely top comment, “free liam”). I casually mention “this is my real classroom layout”, indicating that I am a teacher without being explicit about it. Finally, I end with a call to action: “Go check it out at ShuffleBuddy.com. It’s called Shuffle Buddy.”

The ramp up to 130,000 views (as I write this) was surprisingly smooth. I should have tracked the exact stats, but I launched the video in the evening and woke up the next morning with 3,000 views. At that point, I felt famous. Then, the entire following day, it just grew and grew and grew. By the end of the day, I tracked it for a while (constantly refreshing) was gaining 3,000 views every 20 minutes. It was a smooth acceleration curve that just got gradually faster and faster. At this point it appears to be slowing down, but I’m not sure where it will stop.

The Funnel

Obviously, my goal is not just for people to watch my video. It’s for them to become users of the product. The call to action at the end of the video asks viewers to go visit ShuffleBuddy.com. This was never going to have a high rate of success, because nobody wants to stop scrolling TikTok to go type in a URL to the address bar like a sausage finger caveman. But I did see traffic!

Here is my Google Analytics homepage as I write this:

230 users is great, especially compared to the 1-2 per day I was getting before.

The next bit is tricky. What did users do when they landed on the site? It’s hard to say, because Shuffle Buddy is currently local-only, so I don’t have any signups to track. My hope is that people bookmarked it to use in the future.

There are some pieces of good news:

• Two people filled out my feedback form–which is linked within the app–with very thoughtful feedback about what was working for them and what new features they needed. One also submitted a separate help form.
• Many people (around 25, I would say) left thoughtful comments on the TikTok that indicated they intended to use Shuffle Buddy in the future.
• My favorite stat, 2,347 people bookmarked the TikTok. In contrast to “likes”, bookmarks look to me like a sign of intent to use in the future.

The worst mistake I made was not having a clear action for people to take on the website if they were just visiting on their phone but not ready to sit down and use it yet. I fixed this at the end of the day, just before midnight, by adding an email collection form titled “Not ready for school yet?” and stating “Enter your email here to get Shuffle Buddy reminders when school starts.” I awoke this morning to 10 emails collected overnight, and I’ve gained two more (and counting) since then.

As expected, the funnel tightens quickly for a TikTok video, but adding the email collection form was a huge win enabling follow-up in the future. And with the massive amount of initial viewership (more than a football stadium, to use some U.S. units), I feel great about the result!

One-Hit Wonder?

The obvious correct thing to do is hit it big again.

My understanding of TikTok–which, by the way, is extremely limited because I literally have never scrolled the TikTok timeline and I refuse to do so even now–is that creators often find a format that works and then just turn the crank, churning out similar videos with some small difference every time. If the format is good, it will keep working, at least for a while.

Unfortunately, this initial video was not very repeatable. It’s a product demo showcasing all the best features of the app in as little time as possible. You can do it again, but you can’t really do it differently. I don’t see how, anyway.

So I tried a new format: Live-solving a seating chart puzzle. I set up some rules for myself and tried to hand-create a seating chart matching those rules. Like the mobile ads where you watch someone attempt a puzzle game, except I was more skilled than those people (which might be a content mistake, but it helps my ego). At the end of the video, I show that Shuffle Buddy can instantly accomplish the same task for you.

At the time of writing, this new test video has grown to 11,000 views and counting. It’s really hard to remember how this compares to the initial video. But my overall impression is that it’s never going to be as big as the first one was; however, 11,000 views is a LOT of people and if I can repeat that, I should.

I am going to continue exploring formats, and right before the school year starts I will do another video pretty much identical to the one that blew up. Here’s hoping!