Instagram and TikTok have emerged as key places under 35s get their news and information, so what do you do?
If you are older, you could rail at young people and how they find their information these days and do nothing.
Or you could start to think about using these vertical video platforms as a way to reach younger people. It’s something that news providers are light years ahead with and public sector comms again can learn a lesson.
Firstly, younger people are getting more news from social media so it makes sense for you to target them here. Print really is not an option to reach under 35s. Online and social media is.
Ofcom are also clear that TikTok and Instagram perform strongly with younger audiences. Their data shows 81 per cent of under 35s are using Instagram on average for 980 minutes a month while 59 per cent use TikTok for a smartphone-draining 1,667 minutes a month.
So, what can we learn from news providers? In a nutshell, short form video. That’s video that’s less than five minutes and sometimes hugely shorter. BBC News has 28 million subscribers for Instagram Reels and can net 800,000 views on average for its content. The figure is 6 million subscribers and 160,000 views on TikTok. YouTube Shorts has yet to take off.
Elsewhere, some surprising names are performing well with video. The Daily Mail has 19 million Instagram Reels subscribers with 1.9 million views per post while The Sun has 2.7 million TikTok subscribers with 100,000 views.
Newer news providers are also performing well with the iconoclastic Pink News’s 1.2 million subscribers viewing each video upwards of 100,000 on average.
A news approach versus a trends approach
First things first. I’ve nothing against posting trends as part of an effective social media strategy. Trends can be a particular style of filmmaking. A recent one was Gen Z wrote the marketing script where old people using young people buzzwords. Get on it within days and you are riding the wave. Wait too long and you can appear painfully behind the curve.
The news approach may be easier to deliver for an organisation that doesn’t want dancing nurses at a time where waiting lists are growing.
If you haven’t got them in a second you haven’t got them
One key characteristic that every video shares is that it wins or loses in less than a second.
When I first started delivering video skills workshops the first five seconds were vital. That figure has shrunk with our attention span. As we scroll through Reels and TikToks unless we are captured immediately our audience will scroll past.
For me, the ability to write an absorbing intro – or first paragraph – to a news story here has been replaced by the ability to capture people. This is now best done through a white box. The white box is added using the platform’s editing tools before it is posted live. It is a place to tease, inform or intrigue your viewer into staying around.
For heaven’s sake, don’t start off with the interviewee’s name. Cllr John Smith telling you that he’s cabinet member for anything will only accelerate the scroll away. No, thanks.
The white box deconstructed
In this post, I thought I’d go through some examples of news content posted as vertical video to deconstruct what they were about.
BBC News Reels: ‘Why you could be SNEEZING more this weekend’
There’s a tease at work here. Why could you be sneezing more? The opening footage features a man in his 20s scratching at painful eyes while the voiceover gently leads the viewer towards the information that the pollen count is high, according to the University of Worcester. The voice is identified after 14 seconds as a BBC weather presenter. She then takes to the streets and shoots herself in the style of a selfie delivering the remainder of the warning. It’s the whitebox that has teased the viewer.
Bonus points for datestamping the clip so it it does resurface weeks later it’s got some built-in obsolescence.
Pink News TikTok: ‘Republicans claim ‘Sesame Street’ is ‘grooming’ children following a Pride Month post
The eyebrow raises at the assertion that a decades-old children’s TV show is trying to ensnare children in a less than positive way. They’ve said what? How so? Intrigue plays a part as well as the emotion of moral indignation one way or the other way with this. It’s a subject that is going to appeal to their core viewers who may be homosexual and alive to Pride month and attack by politicians.
The clip pulls in tweets and lasts barely more than 10 seconds. It uses trending audio which has been used for a variety of clips. There are algorithmic brownie points in this.
Daily Mail UK Reels ‘Kings Guard horse BITES tourist… and won’t let go.’
In this clip of user-generated content, the promise is a day gone wrong for an overly bold tourist. You stick around with the promise of footage that back in the day would have been on a show like ‘Beadles About’.
The text is needed because footage of a tourist with a horse isn’t that promising.
The Sun TikTok ‘Iconic Doctor Who pair set to reunite for huge special’
The whitebox here is red with white letters but does the same job. It sets up a reason to watch the clip. A huge special? What’s that about. The clip opens with a still of David Tennant and Billie Piper who led a successful reboot of the TV show 20 years ago. For fans, this is likely to be a hugely popular venture to see them return.
What’s also interesting is that there is just one hashtag on this video #doctorwho. This also underlines the relative lack of strategic importance of the hashtag. There’s no need for them to go overboard. The algorithm reads the images and the transcript of the video as well as the caption.
Conclusion
The whitebox on the screen acts as a way to tease, inform and draw the viewer in. It’s aim is to stop the viewer scrolling. It acts in the same way as a headline does in print but its purpose is slightly different. It rarely tells the whole story.
The whitebox is added when posting the video using the editing tools of the platform. The long term benefit is to put a title on each of the videos in an account’s back catalogue.
Use it.
I deliver training to help you make sense of the changing landscape ESSENTIAL AI FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMMS, ESSENTIAL COMMS SKILLS BOOSTER, ESSENTIAL MEDIA RELATIONS and ESSENTIAL VIDEO SKILLS REBOOTED.