TikTok and political comms: how you should be using the platform for your messaging
With over 1 billion active users, or almost a quarter of all internet users, and over 4.1 billion app downloads, TikTok has quickly become a force that a lot of us have to learn to reckon with. Especially as we dive deep into the user demographics and see that of all of these users, the largest proportion (at least in the USA) are 10 to 19 years old with almost half of all users under 30… which just happens to be the demographic many Comms folks are trying to reach.
So it makes sense we consider using TikTok, and it’s not just for influencers and dancers! In 2022 in Australia, it looked like a change of government was possible for the first time in many years. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) was in opposition at the time with a very specific audience they needed to win over, specifically millennials and gen Z… which is where TikTok came into play. So how did a stodgy political party make this modern day social video platform work for them? We’ve got the top tips from Dr. Susan Grantham’s research paper on making TikTok work for you and your comms:
Use humour and capitalise on trends
Through the ALP’s political TikTok adventure, we noted that the content which was more readily aimed at millennial or gen Z humour would get higher interactions and engagement. Things like using trending sounds or ‘jumping on the bandwagon’ to fit in with trending dances, videos, sounds and more - all of which speaks more to the younger generations.
Visibility labour
This is the work we do to be seen - think of an influencer you’ve seen on Instagram, Facebook or other social media sites; they most likely do a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work such as researching current trending ‘for you page’ fads, or trying to keep in touch with the latest content ideas to use for content creation on their personal accounts. However, this isn’t something that only influencers can do - this is something business can get in on, too.
Learn to pivot
What’s trending today is not going to be trending tomorrow; so you’ll need to keep actively searching and adapting to what is currently trending in order to stay relevant. What you develop now may not be relevant next week, so it’s key to work on your content iteratively.
Be very clear and concise
With shortened attention spans, and the ability to upload only short videos to TikTok, it’s important to be very, very clear in what you're trying to portray and what it means, and then use those tools like linking and tagging to make sure that your audience gets the information that they might need.
Regardless of platform, the younger generations have attested to the fact that they are more often than not relying on social media to get their news, their information and their key insights. So, if that's where people are going to get information, then organisations have to be there to make sure that the right information is being displayed as well. Make sure that you’re using it correctly.
Learn more about constructive conversations!
For more detailed insights on constructive conversations, you can join my upcoming webinar right here.
