The Secret to a Viral Comedy Clip

Sharing one of my biggest pieces of advice.

As a former TikTok analyst who quit my job in July to start my own digital marketing consultancy, the question I get asked most often when meeting with prospective clients is:

How do I get my videos to go viral?

This question is invariably followed by other, technical questions like:

• What time should I be posting?

• How long should my videos be?

• What should the thumbnail look like?

• What hashtags should I be using?

This is likely because, along with follower count, a high number of views has become a widely accepted measure of a “good online presence” across the comedy industry.

I’ve met with comedians all over the world. Without fail, their three pinned videos on Instagram / TikTok are always their three most viewed videos. The logic seems to be that because a lot of people “watched” these videos, they must be their “best” videos.

To be honest, this approach – and looking at total # of views as the only indicator of a “good” video – fundamentally misses the point of why you should be posting online.

That’s not to say those other factors are irrelevant.

It should go without saying that if you are a comedian based in Los Angeles, you shouldn’t be posting at 2:30 AM PST.

But your video didn’t go viral because you posted it at 1:37 PM, instead.

Your video went viral because it was really fucking funny and shareable.

Your video went viral because it perfectly captured a universal experience so well, that a thousand people you don’t know shared it with a thousand other people you don’t know.

So when people ask things like, “What hashtags should I be using?”, I can’t help but interpret that as, “Is a shared truth of the human condition best captured by using #standup? Or #standupcomedy?”.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but your goal shouldn’t be to increase the total number of views on your videos.

I can explain.

Let’s take a real world example:

If a saxophone player busks for four hours outside of Grand Central Station in New York City, they might play in front of several thousand people over the course of a single work day. That’s a lot of eyes and ears!!

This is equivalent to using something like #newyorkcity on an Instagram Reel.

It might have led to a ton of views, but 98% of those “viewers” walked by without stopping, 40% had their AirPods in, and hardly any stayed for more than 5 seconds.

The saxophonist can proudly claim they play in front of 10,000 people a day.

But I’d argue that’s the wrong metric to focus on.

Of those 10,000 people, how many of them came back the next day, and brought their co-workers to listen?

How many followed the saxophonist online, or went out of their way to attend an actual, paid gig?

How many of them learned the street performer’s name? Or even knew what instrument they were playing?

Let’s add another metric of success – $$.

If the saxophonist makes an average of $57/day in tips, is this exposure method really the best use of time and resources?

This is why rather than looking at raw totals (# of Views, # of Likes, # of Comments, etc.), I encourage my clients to look at metrics in terms of percentages to total views.

For example, let’s say you are a comedian who posts a video of a joke that receives 1,000 views, 100 likes, 20 comments, and 15 shares. That video would have a Like Percentage (PCT) of 10%, a Comment PCT of 2%, and a Share PCT of 1.5%.

Even though “only” a thousand people saw it, 1 out of every 10 people who were exposed to the joke went out of their way to signal to their feed, “I’d like to see more of this type of stuff”, and pressed ‘Like’ on the video. That’s wonderful!!

But the metric I’m most excited by in this hypothetical is the Share PCT. 1.5% of all people exposed to this joke went, “Jeff/Stephanie/Arturas has got to see this.”

15 people sent your joke to their boyfriend, or their niece, or their crush in A.P. Biology, or their fantasy football group chat.

Whatever it was, something about your joke made the viewer think of a specific person / group of people, and send it to them.

This is what I mean when I say your goal should not be to get a million views.

If you are a comedian posting on social media, your goal should be to get your clip sent in a group chat full of people you don’t know.

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Aside from Comedy Central Presents and Dane Cook talking about Burger King, some of the earliest stand-up jokes I can recall being shown or discovering were Bert Kreischer’s The Machine story, or John Mulaney’s bit about the Salt and Pepper Diner.

I vividly recall driving around town in 2011 with my friend Max, as he exposed me to the concept of stand-up comedy albums, including John Mulaney’s The Top Part.

I can pull up the exact AskReddit thread from 2015 where someone asked “What Is Your Favorite Standup Comedy Bit?”, and “The Machine” is a top upvoted response.

Anyone who has taken an Intro to Marketing class will tell you this is called your Earned Media (as opposed to Paid or Owned Media¹). Your word-of-mouth. Someone without a vested interest in your success doing your advertising for you.

Share % is one of the closest approximations of tracking this effect.

It’s not perfect – in the UK, there are data privacy laws that hide the # of Shares on individual Instagram posts, so if you’re based in London and just noticed your Reels have like, 12 shares combined, don’t be alarmed– but in general, it’s a far more indicative measure of a “good” clip than total views.

All that being said, if you just want to jack up the view count, that can be pretty easily arranged. I can show you how to get ahold of that megaphone.

But do you think it’s more likely that someone follows your account and comes to your show because you paid for a promoted Instagram Story of a crowdwork clip that cuts off before the punchline, or because a friend of theirs sent them one of your Reels?

Put in comedy terms - would you rather crush in the back room of a local comedy club for 80 paying ticket holders, or bomb at a charity event in front of 1,500 people dressed in formal attire, where you were booked for the completely wrong audience?

For the basketbally inclined – if your best player scored 30 points, but it took them 30 shot attempts, did they really have a good game? (looking at you, Jordan Poole)

This is what things like hashtags can offer.

They might get you more shot attempts, but a lot of them will be 35-foot heaves.

You want to know what Max and I did instead of going to our high school’s Formal Dance in 2013?

We drove an hour and a half up to Milwaukee, to see John Mulaney perform live.

True virality, and in turn, fandom, rarely starts with a paid ad.

It starts because something was shared by someone else, to someone else.

Instead of thinking about the hashtags, or the thumbnail, or whether or not Mercury is in retrograde tonight, zoom out a bit.

Think about how the first 5 seconds of your video appear to someone who doesn’t know who you are, or what stand-up comedy is.

Do they stop and listen, or are you the saxophonist at Grand Central?

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 comedy and digital marketing, especially with respect to accessibility. His Moon is in Virgo.

1. In the context of social media, Owned Media refers to all of the posts on your “own” profile, and an example of Paid Media would be paying for your video to be boosted in other people’s feeds as a promoted post.