Warm up your accounts before you post

Every platform fights an ocean of bot and spam accounts, and the cheapest filter is distrust by default. A new account has no history, so the platform watches its early behavior: does it consume content like a person, or does it only broadcast? Accounts that post immediately, post at high volume, or paste links early get their content shown to tiny test audiences, and sometimes shadowbanned outright. Nothing tells you this happened. Your videos simply get 0 to 50 views forever.

For the first week, use the account only as a viewer, 15 to 30 minutes a day, ideally on the platform's mobile app:

1. 1Days 1 and 2: scroll the feed and watch content in your niche to the end. Search your niche keywords so the algorithm learns your interest graph.
2. 2Days 3 and 4: start liking videos in your niche, a handful a day. Follow or subscribe to 5 to 10 relevant accounts.
3. 3Days 5 to 7: leave a few genuine comments on niche content. Save or share a couple of videos. Keep watching daily.

The goal is an account whose history says: real person, interested in this niche, active daily. That profile also teaches the algorithm exactly who to show your future content to.

Week two transitions from viewer to creator, gently:

1. 1Post your first video around day 8 to 10. One video, not five.
2. 2Keep the daily consumption habit alongside posting.
3. 3Post every 1 to 2 days for the rest of the week, ramping toward your real cadence.
4. 4Reply to every comment you get. Early engagement on a new account is gold, both for the algorithm and for the habit.

Avoid all of these for at least the first month:

• Posting many videos on day one, or bulk-uploading a backlog
• Links in bios, captions or comments in the first weeks
• Follow/unfollow loops, mass-liking sprees, or any automation that acts faster than a human
• Reposting videos with visible watermarks from other platforms
• Deleting and re-uploading the same video repeatedly chasing better numbers
• Logging in through datacenter VPNs or constantly changing devices

The principle is identical everywhere, with small differences in emphasis:

• TikTok is the most aggressive about new-account throttling. A full two-week warm-up is worth it, and the first posts should be as native as possible: vertical, captioned, no watermarks.
• Instagram weighs interaction history heavily. Comments and DMs with real accounts during warm-up help. Reels from accounts that also use stories read as more human.
• YouTube is gentler on new accounts but slower to classify them. Warm-up matters less for reach and more for the interest graph; the bigger YouTube risk is inconsistency later.

Warming up costs two weeks per account and has to be redone for every new channel. If you would rather start publishing today, pre-warmed accounts that already have weeks of genuine human activity are the shortcut: the account history is already built, so your first post gets a normal shot at distribution.