How to make audiences stop and watch short video content

Tik Tok is one of the fastest growing social media platforms for short video content

Getting audiences to stop scrolling and watch your short video content requires complete storytelling freedom, but are leaders ready to give up control?

Everywhere you look online, the populist right seem resurgent. From the UK’s summer riots, to recent farmer protests to the three million strong petition for a general election, the right have become incredibly effective at mobilising in digital spaces.

They've perfected the art of making audiences stop scrolling to watch their content.

Progressive organisations used to be good at this too, but today they have a serious digital content problem. Too often our content is worthy, but dull, over earnest, preoccupied with tone policing or obsessed with reacting to the frames pushed by the right. As progressives we are too often convinced that "we have the best ideas” and that this is all we need.

But if that was really true, the planet wouldn't have crashed through 1.5C warming last year, would it?

A recent report by Reuters* found that news organisations are set to invest more money and time during 2025 in short video content for Tik Tok and YouTube, than any other social media. But unless progressives up their game, they will be left playing catch up.

At Campaign Salience we decided to put our money where our mouth is and devoted a week to sharing short video content to Tik Tok and YouTube shorts.

This is what we learned:

• Short and snappy works

  30 second content can generate solid reach, off basically zero followers. This is very different to other social media platforms where follower counts matter more.

• Two second chunks matter

  Most people swipe away from video content after the first two seconds. Yet both YouTube shorts and Tik Tok really want to see if you can hold audience attention spans for as long as possible. It starts with making your audience stop for a second and watch your content

• Tell stories dynamically

  Good choice of music, creative sound design, dynamic images, video and text, strong cadence and narration, metaphor, hyperbole and transgression - every rhetorical trick needs to be in play. For ideas watch old school Hanna Barbera cartoons.

• Go tabloid

  Use short punchy sentences, mix opinions with facts, use words an 11-year-old could understand. Audiences need your low down in 75 words or less.

• Values come last

  Don't wear your values on your chest, unless you're happy to push people away. Be ambiguous about where you're "coming from" with your content. Your virtues, issues and demands need to be the LAST thing you communicate, not the first.

• Put a face on it

  A person is easier to understand than an issue. Try to "personify" abstract issues in people. Eg: Don’t talk about billionaires, talk about "Elon Musk.” Then work to personify what it is you want to say about billionaires in reference to Musk.

• Reject your CEO's words

  Be assertive, be funny, be hyperbolic, push the boundaries, make mistakes. All that guff beloved by your CEO or Head of Policy ? It's not going to make people stop and look at your content. So it has to go.

• Use the data

  Tik Tok and YouTube are invested in making your content succeed and provide oodles of support to help you. Tik Tok’s data dashboard is particularly good for targeting content at certain audiences.

• The “right” have arrived

  The UK's far right Reform Party stunned many last Autumn when they drove three million people to sign a petition for a general election. This was mostly driven through Reform's digital presence in places like Tik Tok.

• Come downstream

  It is possible and increasingly it is urgent, that progressive organisations learn to synthesise complex issues into 15-30 second bits of content. That means turning ideas around at speed and with FULL (not half full) creative freedom given to storytellers.

• Get out of the way of your storytellers

  This is one of the biggest barriers to success for NGOs and charities on short content platforms. Management, policy people and technical experts need to back away from content. No "input" or sign off might even be the way to go. It might even be worth considering how to put content completely at arm's-length. Creatives need to reclaim authentic storytelling.

• Storytellers need to step up

  That means creatives stepping up to the plate too. Storytellers need to become more expert at policy, strategy and the tactical position that content plays in realising organisational objectives.

• Everything is contestable

  Traditional sign off and brand value considerations are a barrier to fast content and need revisiting. Start by accepting that your issues, your values, your virtues, those things that really matter to you, they are ALL contestable. Time to get used to it.

• Make audiences love the "smell" of your content

  The objective of short form is to keep the viewer's finger immobile over their phone screen, to stop them swiping away. Viewers literally need to love the smell of your content, before they’ve rationalised it.

*Reuters Institute: Digital News Report 2024