E.62 How To Grow To A-Million Plus Followers On TikTok With Heartlyn Rae

 

For this week's episode, we have Julia and Alexis, two best friends since first grade who are now two rising pop-country stars who go by Heartlyn Rae. These musicians have used their platform on TikTok to highlight their original music, song covers, and do public pranks. After quickly growing to 6 million plus followers, the duo is here to share what they have learned. 

“Not only do we love music, but we love pranks and if people love it why not show it?”

 

 

 Kicking off the interview, Heartlyn Rae shares their story on how they started their journey. They stated that it all started with a crush after that both families got closer with each other.

Heartlyn Rae stated:

"They always knew they wanted to be performers. Later on in their career, they were put into a girls group. The music group consisted of three people which then branched off, they eventually moved from their home state of Arizona to Nashville, Tennessee, which is where they decided to do social media to gain fans and exposure for our music. Alexis adds that she really loved pranks and that she just started taping Julias reactions to the pranks."

 

After being on TikTok for a year, the pace picked up for them when the pandemic started. This is because at this time they started doing TikTok full time. The work has paid off, because they are not up to 5.8 million followers, almost 6 million.

Going on social media for Heartlyn Rae started off with covers and exposing their music, but then they found out that they needed a fan base. They wanted to build a relationship with their fans and find out ways in which they can get to know them.

  

They state:

 “If people get to know you, then they will want to buy your product or what you have.”

Which has really worked out in their favors because now their followers want to buy their music and want to know where to find them. 

But, before they could reach success because they went through hurdles to get to where they are now. They state that the hurdles started when they were in Arizona, in the beginning of their success story. They started out nannying, hustling and then at night they would go do shows. They also started doing shows opening up for different people. It has taken them a long time to get to this place. When they moved to where they are now, they only had $500 with a beat-up car and shared a room. They catered for a wedding, with no catering experience as well. They did a lot of jobs to make money in order to get where they are. Another challenge was figuring out editing videos, they had to look up videos on how to do it and keep practicing until they got it.

 Some things they have learned for editing videos would be:

 To film and create it on your camera roll and use an app called Inshot, which has so many tools (It gives you so much more flexibility) and to try to look at it from the audience's point of view.

It took them a while to get momentum. They didn't gain momentum, in the beginning, they started off with two likes on TikTok. They almost quit because of the number of likes they were getting but they decided to keep going and now they are very successful on the platform. They also recall their most embarrassing moments with the type of filters they used and the editing that they did. They have come a long way.

One of the things that helped was consistency. As they were getting used to TikTok and getting big, they started doing ‘drive-by's, which is when they drive in cars and play the guitar and sing to people. People sing back too. This then became their niche on TikTok. They stated that TikTok would find your niche for you. Just get on tik tok and let tik tok find your people. Also, don’t get too picky, just keep posting until a video hits and gets a lot of views.

Some hacks they have for being organized is to go to Home Depot and get a very large whiteboard to write down everything. As well as take some time off for clubhouse to communicate to people. Shifting your day and having a to-do list can help with time management. Most of their time is going to both recording and doing video edits. While Alexis states that they take more time filming because they want quality over quantity. Alexis is always thinking of ideas and content. 

One last tip, they would give women wanting to create tik toks and videos are:

Be consistent.

Be yourself.

Don't be afraid to look silly.

Try new things and always scroll through the for you page to see what's trending.

Just start and don't complicate it.

If Julia could look back at her ten year younger self, she would tell her not to let boys consume her. She states that that distracted her from doing what she wanted to do. If Alexis could look back at her ten-year-old younger self, she would tell her that it's okay to stand alone and have her own opinions. 

You can find more of Heartlyn Rae on:

https://www.instagram.com/heartlynrae/?hl=en,

https://twitter.com/heartlynrae 

 https://www.tiktok.com/@heartlynrae