How I Got Ben Shapiro to Watch My TikTok
Hey all you wool hats and mittens1, and a special welcome to the 106 (!!!!) new subscribers since my last post, The Secret to A Viral Comedy Clip.
I have since converted that piece into an Instagram carousel post, as well as a much nicer-looking infographic, which is where I imagine the majority of you came from:
I’m guessing the rest of you are here from that video I posted of those jewish kids playing basketball on the Miami Heat court last week:
If so, welcome! If not, and you have no idea what I’m talking about, I encourage you to take a moment to watch the video. It’s quickly racked up 3.5+ million views across Instagram and TikTok this week, and is the subject matter of today’s column.
The Instagram Reel edition has a Share PCT of 6.5% (anything over 0.6% is considered high in my book), with over 3x as many Shares as Likes (!!!), indicating it was shared in a hefty amount of group chats filled to the brim with NJBs.
Over the weekend, a Camp Friend of the Mailing List sent me this YouTube short:
So, yeah.
2023 started with my TikToks being reposted by Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, and ends with a feature on The Daily Wire.
WATTBA.
This could all be brushed off as beshert, or some sort of lucky coincidence.
But what if I told you this was all by design?
Let’s take a step back to examine exactly what, when, and why I posted what I did.
Right now, I’m actively trying to grow my own Instagram following to build my credibility within the comedy and digital marketing industries. My goal is to hit 10K followers by the end of the year. At the time of writing this, I’m sitting at 9,615.
I was stagnant at ~9,100 Instagram followers until two weeks ago, when I ran a formal audit of my TikTok account – @zucktok – for some Instagram content ideas.
This data-intensive report is something I do early on with my clients, but had never actually conducted for myself. “Never get high on your own supply”, and so on.
However, I had a lot of success posting my best TikTok on my Instagram in August:
So I figured I could probably draw inspiration from some of my other popular videos, given that my TikTok has a three year sample size of output and a much bigger audience (37K+ followers, 80+ million video views, 6.8+ million video likes).
I analyzed every video on my TikTok profile, organized them into 11 categories (NBA-related content, freestyle raps, Front-Facing Camera videos, etc.) and calculated some of my custom engagement metrics I’ve developed:
What jumps out?
For me, it’s that NBA videos had the highest Like % when adjusting for sample size, and that Jewish Humor videos had the highest Share % when factoring in view count.
I only ran this analysis two weeks ago, so all of this was very top of mind when I tuned into the Bulls game slightly early on the last night of Hanukkah, and caught the tail-end of the pregame scrimmage on Jewish Heritage Night.
Since this video combined these two subject matters, I had a feeling it would perform well. Especially because I filmed and posted it on the last night of Hanukkah.
To be sure I reached exactly the right audience at scale, I thought consciously about another element: Hashtags.
First, I decided on how many to use on TikTok based on this data table:
Then I ran a separate analysis on hashtags used, which I’ve sorted below by frequency:
Four of my top 6 most used hashtags had “nba” in them, and each of those four had an Average # of Views greater than 1.2 million.
I definitely wanted to include three of the relevant, high-performing NBA hashtags mentioned above (#nba, #nbateams, #nbaleaguepass), so that left 3-4 open slots for some hashtags related to Chanukah or Judaism.
Nothing related to either keyword appeared in my table of top used hashtags, so I did some research. I recalled seeing a re-upload of that infamous Smokey Robinson Cameo where he mispronounces “Chanukah” in my feed within the last week.
In fact, if you just type “chanukah” into TikTok, it’s the first video that pops up if you sort the results by Like Count, and filter the Date Posted to within This Month:
That video’s caption:
Hanukkah begins tonight which means we had to bring this back #happyhanukkah #happychanukah #smokeyrobison
So I borrowed #happychanukah and #happyhanukkah from the Smokey Robinson TikTok, made sure to reference this exact Cameo in the actual script of my basketball TikTok so it was genuinely relevant, added #miamiheat, and settled on these six:
For Instagram, I’m more focused on reach than engagement.
I don’t yet have personal metrics to benchmark against, but I’ve learned via my clients’ data that engagement is far lower on average than it is on TikTok.
But there’s a higher ceiling in terms of Share PCT.
This makes sense intuitively. Most people follow significantly more people on Instagram that they personally know than they do on TikTok. You could theoretically share a Reel with your co-worker, nephew, boyfriend, or entire pledge class. On TikTok you likely only follow a handful of people you know in real life.
Here’s what I settled on for my Instagram caption:
You’ll notice it’s a lot more emphasis on judaism than on the NBA. A part of this is A/B testing between Instagram and TikTok, but another part of it is that I did some research into high-performing hashtags within both spaces, and determined this video was more likely to get sent in an Instagram group chat filled with a bunch of jewish kids (say, the current ZBT pledge class at the University of Wisconsin) than it would to a random fantasy basketball group chat. Plus, once I saw that certain jewish accounts I follow such as @hey.alma followed hashtags like #jewishmemes and #jewishhumor, I realized I had a shot at getting aggregated by bigger meme accounts.
I also searched each hashtag and scanned the top results, to see how trendy they still were. It’s not enough to select based on a high use count. Go for recent and relevant.
I then covered the NBA bases with #miamiheat and #tylerherro, and by tagging the following accounts in the video: @nba, @nbatv, @miamiheat2.
The reason I did this was so that my video shows up on each of those pages’ feeds in their “Tagged” tab, which increases discoverability3.
As for video length, I noticed that my videos in the 30-50 second range did really well, for whatever reason:
So I made my video 49 seconds long, and added a compelling, inflammatory text hook at the start. Longtime readers know I have an affinity for a red background with all-caps white text, so I went with this:
I want the viewer to read that text in exactly the time it takes to get to my first funny line in the V/O (cut to my stand-up comedian clients, nodding).
Other elements I considered:
Original Sound vs. Trending Audio: I ultimately went with original sound. I probably should have used the NBA on ESPN theme, which I tend to play under my NBA videos at like 4% volume so it’s barely audible, but it slipped my mind.
Time: I wanted to get it up ASAP, while it was still the last night of Hanukkah. I personally haven’t noticed time posted being a factor in video performance (provided it wasn’t posted at like 2 AM EST), but I got it out around 8 PM EST.
By the way, I don’t think any one of these structural components are why this video went viral. The video didn’t go viral on Instagram because it was 49 seconds long, or on TikTok because I used 6 hashtags. It went viral because it was funny and shareable.
But when we have evidence of so many specific, relevant elements that are associated with my higher performing videos, it would be foolish not to incorporate them. Even if correlation =/= causation. (cut to my STAT 100 professor, nodding)
Hell, even the copy of the V/O was optimized to be “shareable”.
I started off with immediate references to the JCC and Camp Ramah. Although making jokes about the Highland Park Rec Center or Camp Pontiac might have been more truthful to my lived experience, we’re aiming for the masses here. I’m not just trying to get this sent in the Camp Lenox Alumni Facebook group, the goal was to be shared in every group chat of 5+ jewish dudes. Both the JCC and Camp Ramah are franchises with multiple locations all over the US, ensuring a wider reach.
I apologize if it sounds like I’m sucking myself off. My main point is that, while this video is seemingly just me recording my TV and cracking a few jokes, a lot of thought went into its presentation. I had a clear strategy, a target audience, and some metrics to benchmark against, all stemming from my initial data-driven audit. I followed the recipe, and now the video has been shared over 450,000 times, to the point that the guys in the video are challenging me to play basketball against them:
As for how this video came across Ben Shapiro’s desk?
It’s possible someone on The Daily Wire’s social media team is responsible for gathering memes related to judaism for his “React” videos, and scrupulously monitors hashtags like #jewishhumor and #jewishmemes on Instagram and TikTok. Perhaps they spend hours browsing jewish meme subreddits like /r/ani_bm and /r/jewdank, and find rage bait from Twitter accounts like @LibsofTikTok. Then, after all of that, they queue up a comprehensive list of content for Ben to whinge about every day.
Or maybe it was just sent in their group chat.
David Zucker is a digital marketing consultant based in New York City. A former analyst at TikTok, his unique, data-driven approach has catapulted the growth of his clients’ audiences all over the world. He also happens to have oculocutaneous albinism, a rare genetic disorder which renders him legally blind. This condition offers him a unique perspective on both live and digital comedy, especially with respect to accessibility. To schedule a consult, click here.
Was that a Tiger King reference in 2023?
I was not able to tag Tyler Herro due to his personal account’s privacy settings.
For example, on TikTok, you’ll sometimes see videos with the context of “Accounts you follow are tagged in this video”, so I have to imagine similar considerations are taken into account on the Instagram Reels feed.