In what many are calling the “influencer election”, a new analysis of the use of TikTok by the political party leaders has shown Anthony Albanese has had significantly more engagement across TikTok through the campaign than his counterparts Peter Dutton or Adam Bandt by a ratio of 2:1 on engagement and 5:1 on views.
“This is an election campaign where the votes of young Australians have mattered like never before,” said Nathan Powell, chief strategy and product officer, Fabulate.
“TikTok is a central platform for reaching many of these voters and the numbers clearly show Labor and Albanese were far more effective in utilising the TikTok platform to do it.”
Marketing platform Fabulate analysed the respective views and social engagement of the three leaders’ TikTok accounts: Anthony Albanese (@albomp), Peter Dutton (@peter.duttonmp) and Adam Bandt (@adambandt). It found that Labor and Albanese have posted far more through the campaign, but also his TikToks were going much further on average, achieving cumulative TikTok views of some 4.97 million compared with 1.23 million for Dutton and 957,000 for Bandt, who is right behind the Liberal leader in cumulative views.
Key to Labor’s success on the TikTok platform has been consistency of their posting, whichmhas also helped Albanese increase his follower count by more than 25 per cent, well above the growth seen by Dutton on his TikTok account.
“TikTok is a platform that is not solely dependent on your follower account to determine how far your videos go,” said Powell. “What Labor has been excellent at is consistently posting. In fact it posted twice as much content as Dutton and Bandt combined. This has made sure that TikTok content from Albanese’s account was seen by a wide audience. This is best practice and shows a clear understanding of the platform, with a focus on both quality and quantity and how it surfaces content.”
Among Albanese’s most popular videos have been TikToks on construction apprenticeships, on Medicare, and tariffs. “The TikTok strategy used by Labor has seen them experiment, using a “test and learn” strategy throughout the campaign”, added Powell.
“Taking more shots and having a ‘test and learn’ strategy has helped Labor with more engaging content, built for the TikTok platform. This content has then gone further and reached far more voters, particularly those in the younger demographic.”
A breakdown of the three leaders’ TikTok audiences can be seen below.
Source: Fabulate
