TikTok slideshow glossary

The column of buttons on the right side of a TikTok post: profile, like, comment, save, share and the sound disc. It sits on top of your slide, so anything placed under it is hidden.

The ratio of an image's width to its height. TikTok fills a phone screen at 9:16 (1080x1920), while Instagram carousels keep shapes from 1.91:1 up to 3:4 and use 4:5 (1080x1350) as the usual portrait size. Photos outside a platform's range get empty bars or are cropped.

The text under a post, written when you publish it, as opposed to the text on the slides. It can repeat the hook, add context, carry a call to action and hold the words and hashtags people might search for.

The first slide of a slideshow. It is what people see in the feed before they swipe, and it is the thumbnail on your profile grid, where it appears cropped. It should hold the hook as the largest text in the post, placed where TikTok's buttons will not cover it.

The last slide, which tells the viewer what to do next: search for the app, tap the link in bio, follow for part two or save the post. One clear action works better than several. It comes after the payoff, not before it.

A word or phrase after a # in the caption. Hashtags label what a post is about, which helps TikTok search and helps viewers find related posts. A few specific ones describe a post better than a long list of broad ones.

The opening line, usually on the first slide, that gives a viewer a reason to stop scrolling and swipe. It names a situation the viewer recognizes or makes a specific promise that the next slides keep. Hooks are the part of a slideshow most worth testing.

An Instagram post with several photos or videos that people swipe through. As of October 2026, Instagram allows up to 20 items per carousel, all shown in the same orientation, and the usual portrait size is 1080x1350 (4:5). A TikTok slideshow can be reused as a carousel once each slide is resized.

The option in TikTok's create screen that turns the photos you select into a photo post instead of a video. You open it by tapping +, choosing Photo and picking your images in order; text, a sound and the caption are added in the editor before posting.

The part of a slide that TikTok's own interface does not cover. In our measurements on a real iPhone, the buttons cover the right 20% of the screen between 44% and 84% of its height, the caption and username cover the bottom 14%, and the top tabs cover the top 8%. Text and logos belong outside those areas.

One image in a slideshow or carousel. On TikTok it fills the screen best at 1080x1920 pixels. A good slide carries one idea, so the viewer gets something new with every swipe.

The audio that plays under a TikTok post. In a slideshow it is added in the TikTok editor before posting. Which tracks you can pick depends on the account type.

A TikTok post made of still images that viewers swipe through, usually with a sound, short text on each image and a caption. TikTok calls it a photo post. As of October 2026, one post can hold up to 35 photos.

An account that posts without showing a presenter's face, using slides, screenshots, photos and text instead. Slideshows suit it well because nothing has to be filmed. The account still needs a consistent voice and look so people recognize it.

A slideshow built as a numbered list: the first slide promises a number of tips, tools or examples, and each following slide delivers one of them. It is easy to follow and easy to save for later.

Adapting a slideshow for another market: the language, but also the examples, prices, references and posting times. A direct translation of slides written for one country often misses in another.

A loose set of casual photos posted together, like a camera roll from a day or a trip. For a brand it trades a polished look for a personal one, and the captions or short notes on the photos do the selling.

The structure a slideshow follows from first slide to last, such as a numbered list, a problem and its fix, or a myth and the fact that corrects it. A format is separate from the visual style. ViralSlides has 13 of them.

Evidence that other people use and like something: reviews, ratings, user counts, quotes. It persuades only when it is real, so use numbers and quotes you can show the source for.

Content made by customers or users rather than the brand. UGC-style means content that borrows that casual, first-person look. When a brand or someone it pays makes it, it should not pose as an independent customer, and advertising rules in many countries require the connection to be disclosed.

A post that shows no views some time after it went live. It can be still processing, under review, held back on a cold account, or limited by a guidelines issue, and each has a different fix.

TikTok's official interface for apps that publish on a creator's behalf. It has two modes: direct posting, which publishes straight to the profile once TikTok has audited the app, and media upload, which drops the post into the creator's TikTok inbox to finish by hand.

TikTok's main feed of recommended posts, picked for each viewer rather than taken from accounts they follow. Most of the reach a new account gets comes from here. TikTok decides what to recommend, and its guidelines make some content ineligible for this feed.

Posting the same slideshow with different first slides to learn which hook works, changing one thing at a time. Single posts vary a lot, so compare several posts per hook before you decide.

How often and on which days you post. A pace you can keep for months matters more than a burst, because each post is another chance to find what works.

The informal name for reach that drops sharply without any notice. It is not a single switch: the usual causes are a new or cold account, posting patterns that look automated, a real guidelines flag, or the content itself.

Making posts easy to find through TikTok search by using the words people search for in the on-slide text, the caption and the hashtags. It helps a post keep getting views after its first days in the feed.

Using a new TikTok account the way a regular viewer would, watching, following and engaging in its niche, for a while before it starts posting. The point is that the account's first activity looks like a person's rather than a posting bot's.

A TikTok account type for brands, with business tools and analytics. Its sound picker only offers TikTok's Commercial Music Library. Personal and Creator accounts keep the full library.

TikTok's collection of tracks cleared for commercial use. Business accounts can only pick sounds from it, which is why popular songs seem to disappear when an account switches to Business.

The website link on a TikTok profile, the one place a viewer can tap through to your store page. Whether an account can add one depends on its type and region, so check your own profile settings.

A connector that uses the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that lets AI assistants call outside tools. ViralSlides runs one, so an assistant such as Claude or Cursor can generate and send slideshows from a chat.

An App Store link with a provider token (pt) and a campaign token (ct) that you make in App Store Connect. Installs from it appear under Campaigns in App Store Connect's analytics, and a different ct per platform keeps TikTok and Instagram apart.

Improving an app's store listing, its name, subtitle, keywords, screenshots and description, so it ranks in store search and turns more visitors into installs. People who see an app on TikTok often look it up in the store, so the listing has to match what the post promised.

The share of viewers who reach the end of a post. For a slideshow that means swiping through to the last slide, so it shows whether the sequence holds attention. Where your analytics show it, read it next to the slide where people stop.

Two signals of intent. A save usually means the post is worth coming back to; a share means the viewer thought of someone else. Both say more about a post's value than views alone.

A store link with tags that tell the store where a visitor came from. TikTok does not report installs from organic posts, so a tracked link in your bio is how you count the installs that start there.

Tags such as utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign added to a link to label where traffic came from. On Google Play they go inside the link's referrer parameter, and Play Console then reports installs by those tags.