Debate around TikTok’s growth strategies has continued to change as we move into 2026. Now, it’s no longer a question of if you use the growing tools, but how you use them. The algorithm can now detect real connections and engagement compared to meaningless relationships built through “hacks.”
Understanding how to draw the line between manual and technology-based growth using tools (for example, www.highsocial.com) will help you create a profile that has durability and attracts people.
The Human-Led Approach: Why “Doing It Yourself” Still Matters
One-by-one decision making of growth strategies from either a Talent Manager or the Talent themselves. This entails scrolling through hashtags, replying to the comments, and manually engaging with creators to do collabs.
The Pros:
- True Authenticity: Humor, sarcasm, and cultural references are understood by the human brain but not other software. TikTok comments where the creator knows you personally can keep people engaged for a long time.
- Protection: No software is involved that might trigger TikTok’s security measures for you to lose your account. You strategically control what is happening with your account.
- Creative Agility: Humans are able to adjust to changing trends quickly; for example, if a new trend starts at 10:00 AM, a human can create a video about it by 11:00 AM.
The Cons:
- The “Burnout” Factor: TikTok is a 24/7 all-consuming platform. Trying to get interaction from other users will take about 5-6 hours a day, which is nearly impossible to do while juggling work, school, and other daily life things.
- Slow Progress: Because humans can only do one thing at a time, your growth is limited by your own physical energy. It can take months or even years to find your core audience by hand.
The Automation Approach: Speed and Scaling
Using AI to do social media’s backend work while humans take care of the frontend work.
The Pros:
- Efficiency: Automation can analyze trends while you are busy filming your next video.
- Consistency: The TikTok algorithm rewards consistency. Automation guarantees you post at the right time, all of the time.
- Here’s What You’re Saving: With this type of tool, you can focus on creating content, and not spend time analyzing data. You’re able to focus on things like set design, scripts, and brainstorm your ideas.
The Cons:
- The ‘Bot’ Risk: Automation on social media to get people to like, follow, and engage using fake accounts is low effort and can really hurt your account. If TikTok’s algorithm identifies you this way, you best believe your views will drop to nothing.
- Lack of Soul: Using automated messaging and comments too often makes you sound robotic. People don’t want to engage with a machine; they want to interact with a person.
Finding the Middle Ground
To succeed in 2026, top creators don’t pick one of the options available to them. They combine them. They engage in creative work to give a “soul” to the channel and they use smart technology to do the audience finding “grunt work.” This way, creators can shift their focus away from data-heavy tasks and focus on creative/artistic quality only.
This “human-led” and “AI-assisted” approach focuses on both a personal and technical engagement approach.
- Precision Engineering: With the right tech, you don’t need to waste time looking for your audience. Tech will do the work for you. It’ll find the right spots and let you focus on creating.
- Creative Freedom: Figure out your own way of doing things and automate the discovery process; this helps you beat your own way of doing things mentally and allows you to focus on the pretty awesome part – the storytelling and the production.
Just like their own unique way of doing things, people want customizable and special things, not random things. Using fact-based decision making tools allows their growth to be stable and predictable, rather than the random shot at luck and the potential of going viral.
One of the good examples to do this is a company called “High Social”; they use AI and go to actual people instead of fake bots. This helps a creator to also keep his account safe and also keep their engagement numbers and use the speed of the technology.
The Bottom Line
If you go 100% human-led, you will probably burn out before you even become famous. If you go 100% automated, you will probably get banned. The best approach would be a ‘human-led, tech-assisted” approach. Use the tools to get the right people to follow you and keep things on a schedule, but do not lose the personal relations and touch that led people to follow you.
On TikTok, the “math” (the algorithm) will get you the views, while the “heart” (your personality) gets you the followers. This leaves you able to focus on the “heart” part when you use the right tools to handle the “math” part.
