TikTok guru: Start posting longer clips
Views are nice but your real goal should be to get your clip sent in a group chat of strangers.
Here’s a recent entry: The Secret to a Viral Comedy Clip.
Your goal should not be to get a million views.
If you are a comedian posting on social media, your goal should be to get your clip sent in a group chat full of people you don’t know…
True virality, and in turn, fandom, rarely starts with a paid ad.
It starts because these jokes were both shared by someone else, to someone else.
Instead of thinking about the hashtags, or the thumbnail, or whether or not mercury is in retrograde tonight, zoom out a bit. Think about how the first 5 seconds of your video appear to someone who doesn’t know who you are, or what stand-up comedy is.
Zucker also audited all of Matt Rife’s TikTok posts from 2022-2023 and found that, when it comes to Rife, size (of clips) matters:
His conclusion: Start posting longer clips immediately.
If you are a comedian, remember that you are not posting your videos to ComedyCentral+, an app filled with rabid Carlin fans and Mulaney-heads.
You are attempting to leverage a free-to-use global platform with over a billion monthly active users as a means of – let's face it – self-promotion…
[Post clips that are] longer, longer, longer.
If I'm SNL, or @midnight, or Jeopardy, or Fallon, or a DTC podcast, I'm posting full-length sketches, entire interviews, maybe even full episodes, onto TikTok.
By ensuring your output supports these platform’s larger goals (making more $$), you have a much better shot of achieving your own.
More from Zucker:
dear matt,
you're great!
david zucker is great!
this is great!: "Think about how the first 5 seconds of your video appear to someone who doesn’t know who you are, or what stand-up comedy is."
thanks for sharing!
love
myq