In an election campaign where the votes of young Australians will matter like never before, a new analysis of the respective leaders’ TikTok views and engagement has found Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s TikToks have travelled further and gained more likes and comments.
The Labor leader has significantly more likes and comments than his rivals, with views on his videos outpacing Dutton by 6:1 and Bandt 9:1.
Australian influencer marketing platform Fabulate analysed the respective audiences and social engagement of the three leaders’ TikTok accounts: Anthony Albanese (@albomp), Peter Dutton (@peter.duttonmp) and Adam Bandt (@adambandt). It found that not only was Albanese posting far more, but also his TikToks were going much further on average and driving significantly more engagement in terms of likes and comments.
“One of the defining things about TikTok is that it’s not solely your follower account which determines how far your videos go,” said Nathan Powell, chief product and strategy officer of Fabulate. “Clearly the Albanese team have learnt a lesson or two about TikTok and are following best practice on the platform, which is posting consistency and having clear content pillars to message to your audience.
“The numbers they are getting are clearly resonating but it appears to be largely, if not wholly, organic reach. Based on these figures, all three parties should be considering boosting their leaders’ accounts to reach new and engaged audiences, especially those aged 18-24.”
Despite having relatively small TikTok followings, often dwarfed by their own political party accounts, many of the leaders’ videos are each garnering hundreds of thousands of views and in cases have much better engagement.
So far during the campaign, Albanese’s most watched video has been one talking about Australian values and taking care of people, which has been watched more than 400,000 times. Dutton’s most watched TikTok is a photo montage of him talking about housing affordability, which has been watched 130,000 times, while Bandt’s most watched video is on the legalisation of marijuana, which has had 90,000 views.
“As ever with social media the things that get traction are varied, and it’s interesting to see which videos did well during the first half of the Election Campaign,” said Powell. “When you consider the younger and more male-skewing audiences of the leaders’ TikTok accounts it’s not surprising that free Medicare, housing affordability and legalisation of marijuana would resonate with this audience.”
According to Fabulate Discovery, each of the three main TikTok accounts have between 100,000-200,000 followers, with the largest demographic aged 18-24 and skewing, in some cases significantly, male.
“Content featuring people and issues is resonating the most,” said Powell. “While meme- generated content, which has generated news headlines, is not the content that is travelling the furthest. The memes that have performed well have been based on well known franchises such as The Simpsons, Minecraft and Seinfeld.
“Politicians are always obsessed with polling and data. A platform like TikTok is useful in gauging what issues and topics are resonating particularly with younger voters. Smart politicians and parties should be using the platform to test messages in real time and adapt to the evolving campaign.”
Fabulate is one of Australia’s leading influencer platforms and recently made the top 10 in Deloitte’s prestigious Tech Fast 50 award. Earlier this year, the company also won Australia’s Best Influencer Marketing Technology award at the industry’s AiMCO Awards for the second year in a row.
Breakdown of views by party handle
Breakdown of engagement by party handle
