How to Make TikTok Slideshows for Your App (Step by Step)

Your aha screen is the one screen that instantly explains what your app does. For a calorie tracking app, it might be the screen that shows up after you scan an apple: calories, macros, and health numbers all in one place. That screen shows exactly the value a user will get.

A good test: if you showed this screen to your mom, your barber, or the president, would they all get it right away? If yes, you've found it. You'll use this screen in your call to action slide, so it's worth getting right.

Every TikTok slideshow has three parts:

1. The hook (slide one), which gets people to stop and swipe
2. The content slides, which deliver on the hook's promise
3. The call to action, which tells people where to go next

The hook and the call to action are the highest-leverage slides. A weak hook means few views, and few views means few downloads. A weak call to action means views that never turn into installs.

Say you're marketing a golf app. A strong hook might be "6 unexpected ways to get better at golf." It works for three reasons:

• It tells viewers exactly what they'll get by swiping.
• It promises something valuable: getting better at golf.
• It creates curiosity. What are these unexpected ways, and what am I missing?

Test many hooks. Even changing one word can make a big difference.

If your hook promises six unexpected ways to get better at golf, your content slides need to deliver six. Good slideshows are either educational or entertaining, because the metrics that matter most on TikTok are shares and saves. When people share your slideshow or save it for later, TikTok takes that as a signal to push it further.

Here's a trick that works well: make the last item on your list your app. The first five slides are real golf tips, and number six is "use Scratch AI." Your product becomes part of the value instead of an interruption.

There are two types of call to action slides: hard and soft.

A hard CTA puts your app front and center. It needs three things:

• Where to get the app, such as a "Download on the App Store" badge or "Search on the App Store"
• The app's name, so people know what to search for
• The app working, which is your aha screen, so people see what it will do for them

A soft CTA mentions your app quietly. The app name might appear in the slide's text, but it doesn't take over the slide. Most people don't like watching ads, and a soft CTA is subtle enough that many viewers won't notice one or swipe away.

Each approach has a tradeoff:

• Hard CTAs usually get more downloads per 1,000 views, but when people recognize an ad, more of them swipe off. That hurts your analytics and can limit how many views you get.
• Soft CTAs usually get fewer downloads per 1,000 views, but they're easier to push to high view counts because the slideshow doesn't feel like an ad.

Test both and see which drives more total downloads for your app. Either way, small tweaks to this slide can make a big difference, so keep experimenting.

Social media already shows you what people want to see. If a post has a lot of views, it's a good post. When you're starting out, find accounts that are winning with slideshows and copy their formats and styles.

A good rule is that about 80% of your content should follow proven formats and 20% should be experiments. Starting with proven formats gets you results faster and builds a posting rhythm, since coming up with dozens of original ideas from scratch is hard.

The more you post, the faster you improve and the faster you learn what works. Experiment with hooks, styles, and call to action slides. When something wins, test similar versions of it. If one hook took off, close variations of it might too. You can also keep a winning hook and swap the background images, since every slide is just an image with text on top.