How to use TikTok, the short-form video app Gen Z loves and that’s ushering in a new era of influencers

The first thing you’ll see upon opening the TikTok app is a feed of content from people you follow, similar to Instagram or Twitter. You’ll only see one video at a time, but you simply swipe up to continue through your feed and see more content.

My biggest gripe with TikTok is the setup of the feed, which can be especially daunting for first-time users. There are a lot of options in front of you and not a lot of direction.

It’s likely why I’ve heard from many people — particularly some of my curious, millennial-age colleagues — that when they first opened TikTok, they got so overwhelmed they never opened it again.

The TikTok home page, where your feed lives, is split up into two sections: “following,” to only see content from users you follow, and “for you,” which amasses popular content from across TikTok, similar to Instagram’s Explore page.

Switching between the two home feeds is as simple as swiping left and right — you’ll know which feed you’re on because the title will be bolded.

In order for TikTok content to end up in the “For You” feed, videos have to be posted with the hashtag “#foryou.” More on video-posting later.

The right-most tab in the menu bar is where you’ll find your personal TikTok profile. I personally have yet to post anything so my feed is empty, but here I can also edit my profile and bio.

Now onto all those icons dotted around each video in your feed, because there’s a startling amount of options TikTok gives you for interacting with each post. If you want to see more info about the account that posted each video, you can either click on the username toward the bottom of the video, or the top-right icon to follow the user.

Sometimes when you go to a TikTok user’s profile, you’ll see a pink circle around the icon with a “Live” button. That indicates the user is live-streaming, a popular feature within TikTok that allows popular creators and influencers to interact directly with their fans. If you have notifications turned on for any users, you’ll get notified in your Inbox tab when they go live.

Back in your news feed, videos will often be posted with hashtags in their descriptions. Clicking on these hashtags will lead you to individual landing pages, where you can find the number of videos using that hashtag and see just how viral it’s went on the platform. You can click on the “save” button to bookmark a certain hashtag for easy tracking in the future.

For TikTok, each posted video requires the use of a “soundtrack.” That doesn’t mean you can’t record your own sound — it’ll be denoted as “original sound,” which makes publicly available for others to use by clicking on the music track located at the bottom of a video. In turn, for your own videos, you can overlay them with popular music for lip-syncing videos, or for tracks that have been meme’d — like this “Rich boy check” audio.

All of the content that you save on TikTok — videos, hashtags, sounds, and video effects — lives in a bookmark tab that’s found on your profile.

Now, for creating your own content. To create a TikTok video, click on black square in the middle of the menu bar. Doing so will open up your camera and all of the features available to use within your video.

TikTok videos can go up to 60 seconds in length. The endless number of features you can apply to content makes it easy to make personalized videos — you can slow down or speed up your video, add Snapchat-like effects, and record and stitch together multiple clips.

When it comes time to add a sound, TikTok has a vast library to find music, from snippets of the latest hits, to TV show theme songs, to clips from movies. If there’s a sound you want but it’s not in the library, that’s where your “saved” tab comes in, where you can add your own spin on someone else’s soundtrack.

Once you create your video (like this one of me watching the US women’s soccer team play in the World Cup at work), there are even more effects at your disposal. Here you can trim your video as you want, add transition effects for between video clips, and add stickers and text similar to those on Instagram Stories.

Once you’re done creating your video, you’ll be sent to a screen where you can control how your video is used. Just like Instagram, you can add hashtags and friend mentions. You can also choose video-by-video whether you want the post to be public, private, or visible to friends only.

In order to create a Duet or React video, click on the arrow that appears on any TikTok video. If the user has enabled duets and reaction videos, you’ll find the options in the menu that pops up.

Remember, this is only a comprehensive overview of what TikTok can do. With the number of features that extend across the app, TikTok can be incredibly overwhelming to the unsuspecting user. But with more than a billion people using the app, there’s likely a niche area of TikTok somewhere on the platform just for you.