Quick overview
This workflow runs every morning to search TikTok for recent videos matching a keyword via API Direct, logs new results to Google Sheets, and sends a Slack alert when a video’s play count exceeds a configurable viral threshold.
How it works
- Runs every morning on a schedule.
- Sets the target TikTok keyword and the viral play-count threshold.
- Searches TikTok for the most recent videos from the last 24 hours using API Direct.
- Skips videos that have already been logged in previous active runs by tracking seen URLs.
- Appends each new video’s date, author, title, URL, and engagement metrics to a Google Sheets trend log.
- Sends a Slack channel message for any newly found video whose play count meets or exceeds the viral threshold.
Setup
- Add an API Direct credential (API key) and ensure the TikTok “Search TikTok videos” step uses it.
- Connect Google Sheets OAuth credentials and select the target spreadsheet and sheet in the append step.
- Create a Google Sheet with columns:
date, author, title, url, plays, likes, shares, comments.
- Connect Slack credentials and choose the channel to receive breakout alerts.
- Update the keyword and viral threshold values in the keyword settings step, then activate the workflow so the seen-video memory persists between runs.
Requirements
- An API Direct API key (new accounts include free credit)
- A Google account for Sheets
- A Slack workspace (for breakout alerts)
Customization
- Switch the search to Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter/X by changing the resource on the search node
- Tune the viral threshold per niche — 100k plays is huge for B2B, small for dance
- Track engagement rate instead: alert when likes/plays is unusually high
Additional info
API Direct is a verified community node, available on n8n Cloud and self-hosted n8n — search "API Direct" in the nodes panel to install. One API key covers Twitter/X, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Threads, Truth Social and Google News/Maps/web search (58 operations), pay-as-you-go from $0.002/request.