Social Media Audit: Matt Rife
A deep dive into the TikTok wunderkind
Hey all,
Today I wanted to share some findings from an analysis I conducted on comedian Matt Rife’s social media presence.
Matt is widely regarded as the best stand-up comic currently leveraging social media to grow his real life audience, and has had one of the fastest rises in global name recognition in my lifetime. At the time of writing this, he currently has 33+ million followers across his TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter profiles.
This meteoric rise means he’s become a popular person to rag on within the comedy scene, but to be honest, most of it reeks of envy. Not only is he good looking, but he has seemingly cracked the code on social media, and is making a shit ton of money.
Today we’ll be uncovering some interesting data underneath the surface of his online success, and identify what’s fueling his sudden growth.
From 2022-2023, Matt posted 193 TikToks and 123 Instagram Reels.
I know this because I counted and watched all of them myself.1
During that time, he also posted multiple self-produced hours on YouTube, and finished 2023 with a controversial full-length special released by Netflix in November.
But before we delve into the numbers, let’s do a high-level audit of his social media profiles.
The first thing I look for when taking on new clients is a consistency of handle and profile picture. Here are Matt’s profiles across the five major platforms he posts on:
Consistency of profile picture: 3/5
For my stand-up comedian clients, I generally recommend a picture of you being funny on stage that aligns with your personal brand, or communicates your style.
Right now, Matt’s pro pics aren’t quite doing that.
The Facebook and Twitter profile pictures are attempting to capture the “hot” aspect, but fail to communicate the “comedian” part. The picture used on his TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube accounts appears to be a screenshot of a graphic made to announce his Netflix special, Natural Selection. Too much real estate is taken up by his name. There’s not enough of his face, and it doesn’t tell us who he is, or what he does. And the YouTube one is oddly cropped.
Since Matt is a pretty standard act, I would recommend a picture of him holding a microphone on stage where you can clearly see his face, but not a staged one where he’s doing a big-eyes, big-mouth “comedy face” that has become extremely popular.
I just Googled “Matt Rife on stage” and found these photos in some of the first results:
You could adjust the background, circle crop, and these would get the job done, IMO.
This is not always my recommendation, by the way. The key here is brand alignment.
There are plenty of “alt” comedians who have funny pictures / handles that still align with their brand and style of comedy, whether they are conscious of that are not:
None of them are holding microphones on stage, nor would I suggest that. These are all people who make unconventional specials and TV shows. But their choices still align with their brand, as much as that word would likely make all six of them vomit.
Consistency of handle: 2/5
@mattrifecomedy on YouTube, Comedian Matt Rife on Facebook, @mattrife across Instagram and X, but his TikTok has an underscore, @matt_rife.
I’m sure it bothers him that @mattrife was already taken by a TikTok account with two total posts and last active in 2016, when TikTok was still Music.ly:
Pssst! If Matt or his team end up reading this, you can likely submit a handle change request. As long as that other account is inactive (considering it hasn’t posted in 7+ years, I think we are in the clear), you could probably get that changed fairly quickly.
To paraphrase Sean Parker, I feel like his Facebook page could, “drop the ‘Comedian’”.
Its URL is facebook.com/itsmattrife. Again, I’d “drop the ‘its’”
facebook.com/mattrife automatically redirects to facebook.com/matt.rife , so I think he could claim @ or /mattrife across all major social media platforms pretty easily.
As for YouTube, he has @mattrifecomedy. It appears that @mattrife is this guy:
Considering this account has 0 posts and very obviously used to be called “Nolan’s Trick Shots”, I’m sure Matt has a contact at YouTube that could reclaim this handle for him.
The link in his bio on X, Instagram, and TikTok all funnel to mattrifeofficial.com. Love this. I always recommend to have all your socials funneling to the same link. Not a LinkTree, and not to your other socials, but to a link that makes it as easy as possible to buy tickets. Especially when you have a tour you’re actively promoting.
I will say, having the Www. with a capital W on TikTok reads a bit boomer-y:
His website has a simple, intuitive layout. It has links to his social media profiles, a shop with merch, and a long list of upcoming shows, many of which are sold out:
There’s also an option to sign up for his mailing list at the bottom of the page, but it’s not super clear what we’re getting if we subscribe. Its phrasing has sexual connotations, although that may be intentional:
I would advise Matt to add a tab with links to watch his YouTube specials. I’d also have a few, recent videos of him being funny on stage. As it stands, it’s a bit barren.
Okay, now for the data. Let’s focus on TikTok for today.
Matt posted 193 TikToks in 2022 and 2023, of which 156 were solo crowdwork clips:
Other than when disaster struck (audience member having a seizure, microphone malfunction, etc.), this was overwhelmingly his best performing video type.
Some Quick Stats:
The average video length across all of Matt Rife’s 193 TikToks posted in 2022-2023 was 2 minutes and 20 seconds, over double the supposed “industry best practice” of quick-hitting, minute long clips.
Average length of his ten most viewed TikToks: 3 minutes and 19 seconds.
The average video length of Matt’s top ten TikToks in terms of Like %2 during that time frame: 3 minutes and 36 seconds.
The average length of Matt’s bottom ten TikToks in terms of Like %: 54 seconds.
Of those 10, five were direct promo, either for a new special or live tour.
Average length of his top ten TikToks in terms of Share %: 4 minutes and 42 seconds.
In other words, longer = better.
And that tracks for literally every metric when you sort his videos by length:
Here are some average stats on his ten longest videos posted during this timeframe:
Average Video Length: 7 min 22 sec (!!!)
Average Number of Views: 18.6 Million (!!!!)
AVG Like PCT: 13.8% (!!!!!!) | Share PCT: 1.0% (!!!!) | Save PCT: 1.2% (!!!!)
Just for fun, let’s do some math on how much Matt could have made from his TikTok, had he joined the Creativity Program Beta last year.
I’ll assume a pretty conservative RPM (revenue per thousand views), but give a few options, based on when he might have joined the program:
I’m probably overestimating the eligible views (content moderation policy, Community Guidelines violations, etc.), but radically underestimating the RPM.
By the way, I think if he made a few tweaks, these numbers would be even higher.
The main ways you can increase reach are hashtags, text hooks, and location tags.
Here were Matt’s top 20 most used hashtags on TikTok. What jumps out?
For me, it’s that the top two hashtags in terms of Total Views and Like % were #heckler and #deaf.
Re: text hooks, while he does uses capital white text with a red background – another attention-grabbing trick I recommend – his text hooks aren’t always compelling.
They should always make us ask a question in our head, and give us pause.
I would explore including more inflammatory statements, questions, and superlatives.
Location tagging is a biggie. Only twice did he tag a video with a Location.
One of them was a short reenactment of another comedian’s viral moment, tagged at a specific comedy club called Uncle Vinny’s in Point Pleasant, NJ. The other was a crowdwork clip tagged in Atlanta that got 13.6 million views with a Like PCT of 16.2%.
Per his website, his next shows with tickets still available are in Waterloo, NY, Denver, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. I would put a video or two in each location these next 2-3 weeks with a few localized hashtags and see if that affects ticket sales.
There’s also one last factor that was easily the biggest contributor to the success of his videos, across all platforms. After all, not all crowdwork clips are created equal.
For instance, here is a lower performing TikTok from 2022, on which Matt commented, “Lowest performing video ever, I don’t get this app”:
Here’s the video:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Any guesses? Vote now on your phones.
It’s not because he used a white background with black text for the text hook.
It’s not because the video is poorly cropped for vertical viewing.
It’s not even because he’s plugging his Instagram in the top left corner.
It’s because the first laugh in the clip doesn’t occur until 20 seconds in!!
Remember, the best case scenario is that your video gets seen by a bunch of people who don’t already know who you are, nor watch a lot of stand-up comedy.
Most people aren’t sticking around for 20 seconds on a video of someone they don’t know. They’re swiping to the next TikTok on their FYP. And the next. And the next.
If Matt gets that “time to first laugh” (TTFL) on each video down to an average of 4-6 seconds, writes more compelling text hooks, and continues posting longer videos, I estimate that he could make $3 million in 2024, off organic TikTok videos alone.
But what do I know? I only do math work, right?
WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY STAT RIFE
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.
And yes, I’m single.
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