Experiment results reveal TikTok algorithm supports shorter videos with maximum reach

An experiment conducted by the HootSuite team seems to have reached a greater extent by formulating shorter content videos, grabbing most of the users’ attention in a while.

The commonly used social media platform, TikTok has been downloaded by over 689 million users worldwide. To get the maximum reach you have to make sure to create the right length of content. Probably you are familiar with the recent update of the ten-minute video uploading limit on TikTok. I’d suggest creators not just focus on 10-minute videos and 3-minute videos, rather you should be sticking to shorter form content. The reason why I am saying this is that the HootSuite team conducted an experiment named ‘Seven-second Challenge’ that reveals some exciting results. The initial hypothesis statement was claiming that seven-second videos and more texts on TikTok appear to catch more engagement.

To perform this trial effort there were mainly three main objectives. Firstly, the videos could be based on random stuff like the stray dog is drinking water or someone is enjoying a cruise party, or a baby girl mimicking parents. Secondly, the video must contain a relaxing or most popular soundtrack that is liked by the masses. And lastly, the video should have plenty of stuff in the form of long paragraph texts that could be read within a seven seconds time frame.

Three different format videos were uploaded with the caption #sevensecondschallenge. The top one features Owly, showcasing lots of text and music. Next was some productivity hack video and the last was the poolside video explaining this whole challenge shortly. The result analysis reveals the hypothesis was right as seven seconds video was able to attract more than average viewers’ watch time. Owly video received 50 percent watch time while the second video earned 100 percent engagement and the poolside video got 36 percent reach possibly since the video used original sound clip and text wasn’t that much attractive.

So, based on the above experiment, I can say that, for now, the TikTok algorithm isn’t favoring longer videos. Tiktok says that currently in the U.S., Canada, and the UK this longer video uploading feature is not giving promising results in 99.99 % of niches. If you want to get more engagement, do not use sound that does not fit the format of the video you’re trying to create or that aren’t trending within your niche because if you are not taking advantage of the sounds that are trending in your niche you won’t get high reach and when you find a sound that works in your niche keep using it over and over again and you’re all set to upload your content.


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