How to Use Covers and Hashtags for TikTok Competitor and Product Research

When you run overseas short-video marketing for exporters or factories, the first question is usually: what does this category look like on TikTok right now? What are others filming, what covers do they use, which hashtags do they attach? Many people scroll through a few dozen videos and sum things up from impressions. The trouble is that those conclusions can't be re-checked, and next time you have to start over. This guide offers a more systematic approach built around two elements that are easy to overlook yet easy to quantify, covers and hashtags, so the research can be repeated.

Why covers and hashtags

Covers decide whether people tap. On profiles, search results and hashtag pages, the cover is what viewers see first. The cover compositions and text styles that repeat within a niche are, in effect, the "click language" that audience is used to.
Hashtags decide who sees the video. They are one of the signals used to categorize and surface a video. Which tags recur in a niche, which are broad and which are narrow long-tail terms, directly shapes your own tag mix.
Both can be organized into a table. Unlike a vague feeling that a video is good, covers can be compared one by one and tags can be counted, so your conclusions can be checked and reused.

Before you start: define the scope

Write down three things so the research doesn't drift:

Category and keywords: for example "silicone phone case" or "portable projector", in both your own and the target language.
Target market: content styles differ noticeably between the US, Southeast Asia and Europe, so pick one main market first.
Questions to answer: such as "what types of videos perform best in this category", "how are covers usually designed", "which hashtags are used". The more specific, the more useful your conclusions.

Step 1: Collect samples

Search TikTok by keyword and related hashtags, and collect 20 to 30 videos from the last 2 to 3 months in the niche. Include accounts of different sizes so you don't only study the biggest ones. Record the link, account and posting date of each.

Step 2: Filter for what is truly popular

Views alone can mislead because of paid promotion or trend-riding, so use engagement rate to help. Paste each link into the Engagement Rate Checker, record plays, likes, comments, shares and the rate, and mark those clearly above the group's level. Our engagement rate article explains how to interpret the numbers.

Step 3: Save the covers and compare

Use the Cover Downloader to save each sample's cover into one folder, sorted by engagement rate. Then go through them along fixed dimensions:

Dimension	What to look at
Composition	Close-up of the product, a usage scene, or a person? How much of the frame does the product take?
Text	Is there overlaid text? A price, a feature, a question, or an emotional phrase?
People	Is someone on camera? A face, hands, or no people at all?
Color	Solid background, real-world scene, or high-contrast saturation?
Polish	A designed image, or just a frame grabbed from the video?

Putting the high-engagement group next to the low one makes differences easier to see. Mind the sample size: a dozen covers support a hypothesis, not a rule.

Step 4: Extract hashtags and count them

Use the Hashtag Extractor to pull the #tags from each video's caption into a sheet, then count:

The most frequent tags: usually the niche's broad terms, with large reach but heavy competition.
Tags that appear in only a few videos, but those videos have high engagement: possible niche directions worth testing.
How many tags and in what mix: broad terms plus a few narrow ones, or just one or two tags? Do high-engagement videos share a habit?

You can group tags into rough layers to plan your own mix:

Broad terms: the main category, wide coverage.
Category terms: more specific product names.
Scenario or audience terms: where it's used and who it's for.
Long-tail terms: very specific needs.

Note that you only get the tags the creator wrote in the caption, not tags TikTok adds itself, and their effect isn't linear, so more tags is not automatically better.

Step 5: From findings to action

Condense the results into a one-page summary that answers your original questions:

Content direction: which types dominate among the high-engagement samples (unboxing, comparison, usage scene, making-of)?
Cover plan: what composition, text and color will you use? Offer two or three versions you can A/B test.
Hashtag plan: which layers of tags go on each video.
Product judgment: if you're also assessing a product direction, several accounts posting similar videos with solid engagement, plus commenters asking about price and where to buy, makes real interest more credible. If only a few hits stand out while the rest is quiet, be cautious.

Then validate with your own videos: make a batch following the plan, watch the data, and refine. Research is a starting point, not an endpoint.

Things to watch

Copyright: covers and videos belong to the original creators. Saving samples for study and internal reference is one thing; publishing someone else's cover or video as your own is another and raises copyright issues that need permission first.
Sample bias: studying only top accounts creates the illusion that you need a big production budget. Look for success stories from smaller accounts too.
Timeliness: platform styles change quickly, so rerun the research every month or two.
Don't rely on numbers alone: comments often reveal what viewers care about better than metrics do. Read a few from the high-engagement videos.

FAQ

How many samples are enough? 20 to 30 per niche is a practical starting point. More adds organizing effort, fewer lets individual cases skew the picture.

Do I have to save covers one by one? Is there a batch option? Right now the cover download works one link at a time. For a sample of twenty or thirty, it takes about a quarter of an hour. If you need batch processing, tell us on the Pro waitlist page.

Are more hashtags always better? No. Relevance and a sensible mix matter more. Start from what the high-engagement samples do, then adjust with your own data.

Is this only for product selection? No. The same process works for content topics, account positioning and competitor account research. Only the questions you want answered change.

Pick a category you care about, collect 20 samples, save the covers and extract the hashtags, and you can have a first version of your research findings within half a day.