GUEST POST: Why These Comedians Went Viral (Political Edition)
An election-inspired breakdown of some recent online hits.
Hello! I’m David Zucker, a former data analyst at TikTok that consults with dozens of comedians and companies within the entertainment industry. I also run a mailing list of my own, where I recently shared my New York Comedy Festival Guide. Be sure to check it out while the festival is still on for 7 more days! Other recent articles include some thoughts on Dropout’s recent political stance, and how SNL got their most viewed TikTok ever. Today, we’ll go under the hood of election-related TikToks from Kylie Brakeman, Marcus Monroe, Austin Nasso and Estee, Tommy Brennan, and Chloe Hechter.
Kylie Brakeman
I wanted to highlight three recent TikToks from Kylie Brakeman, because I think they tell an interesting story when analyzed together. Funnily enough, Kylie was actually the subject of my first ever article in this style. By the way, if you’ve missed any of these monthly breakdowns so far, here are why some comedians went viral in January, February, March, April, May, June, an Edinburgh Fringe Edition, a new SNL Cast Member edition, and a YouTube deep dive.
Video #1: The Electoral College Makes Sense (Tues. 11/5)
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Video 2: “i’ll delete this later” (Weds. 11/6)
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Video #3: Two Couches (Thurs. 11/7)
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Here are some stats I pulled for these three TikToks, all posted one day after another:
In addition to serving as a live look at Kylie quite literally going through the Denial, Bargaining, and Depression Stages of Grief as the election results came out, these three videos tell an interesting story of Kylie gradually reaching the right audience.
If it’s any solace, the fact all three videos are longer than a minute tells me she’s at least made a few hundred bucks off them, thanks to the Creator Rewards Program.
While the Electoral College video from 11/5 received by far the most views to date, the follow-up videos did far better in terms of every advanced engagement metric.
For some general benchmarks, a good Like PCT to target is 8%, as is any Comment PCT over 0.02%, and anything over 0.7% for both Save and Share PCT1.
Clearly, Kylie blew all those out of the water. And I know it sounds like a relatively low figure, but a 0.4% Comment PCT is legitimately unheard of.
The Like PCT nearly doubled between the first and second videos, and still maintained an extremely high rate (nearly 1 in 5 people) by the third video. Not to mention some insanely high Share PCT’s over 4%, six times the target benchmark.
This is what likely contributed to those high followers gained counts. If you proportioned that out by how many views the first video got, the follow up videos would have garnered her 4,179 and 5,691 followers, respectively.
Can’t wait to see what she’s got cooked up for her “Acceptance” stage!
N.B. The remaining videos have all been flagged by TikTok as election-related with a, “See real-time election results from The Associated Press” banner tacked across the bottom. It remains unclear if that label ‘flagged’ the videos, or put them under any sort of microscope. Whatever it did, it clearly didn’t suppress their total views.