The Sardine News on TikTok

The Sardine News on TikTok

The Sardine News on TikTok: yep, we made the uploads and we were absolutely devoured by the TikTok audience. We got over 50 000 video views in the first few days.

For perspective – it takes a helluva lot of effort for us to get even 10 000 views on YouTube in a month.

Resting on these laurels proved to be our undoing, however. We are now scraping by on 1000 to 2000 views per day. From 20 000 – our best 24 hours in that honeymoon week on TikTok.

The content

Was a series of shorts, or reels – call them what you like, but they are short form and vertical (portrait) videos. Very short, like 3 seconds up to a minute or so.

Click right HERE to check out our TikTok videos.

Format

Luckily when sometimes my cameras roll around on the bottom, the frame usually ends up being at 45 degrees so. Which fits quite ok into the vertical video format we are forced to work with here.

“A vertical video is made in portrait mode and has a 9:16 aspect ratio. Vertical videos are taller in height than they are in width, the ideal dimensions being 1080×1920 pixels.”

Google

Otherwise, this format is the salvation of that huge swathe of people who started filming videos when they first got a smartphone. Vertically! I was running around trying to stop everybody from doing this. As a video editor, I was appalled. How was this gonna work?

Most of my stuff by far is in landscape and it will stay that way. This was really an experimental foray into TikTok and short-form vertical video.

But let’s not forget – that we hold our sacred little phones in the vertical orientation all day long too.

Landscape Thumbnails…

Versus the portrait format below.

Production

Was actually hell in this case. I am a die-hard Premiere user. And I have an age-old installation which I am currently operating with. Very stable. But it doesn’t know about TikTok or Instagram. No presets.

Plus, most of my material is shot in landscape mode (horizontal).

And so, I just made the videos on their side. Guaranteeing resolution and maximum quality. And the joys of laying out a scene in Premiere. Colour correction. Audio. And dressing up with logos, titles, animations and things. Albeit my neck got a little uncomfortable but they are really short videos anyway.

Then they had to go for a joyride through the built-in video editor that comes with Windows 10 these days. Tedious and time-consuming to rotate and then render each video into the vertical video format. But shaving off two-thirds of the bulk of each file. Leaving me with tiny little uploads of between 5 and 50mb.

A reasonable workflow that can be lived with. There are so many options out there these days. Even through a browser or on your phone, video editing has become really easy and accessible.

Momentum

By uploading in two batches of a dozen or so in each, we seemed to have fallen off the algorithm bus. I do believe that had I kept uploading – even ones and twos, we would have stayed on that magnificent trajectory.

Batching is the only way to stay ahead of yourself. It takes a lot of work and slogging but once you are sitting on a bunch, like 20 or 30, man-oh-man can they work for you. And for a very long time.

Shorts on YouTube

So I uploaded the series to YouTube and included the hashtag #shorts in each one. Some did ok – 2000 odd views straight away. And then like all YouTube videos, they just flat-lined. No pulse.

I have zero faith in the YouTube algorithm because: I go two nice marlin clips from Duarte at FishBazaruto. Different fish but very similar in every other regard. Slightly sensationalist titles like HUGE or MASSIVE marlin. The one got 2000 views. The other got 50.

So now what?

YouTube is such a disaster area right now. Plus, shorts on YouTube are hardly monetizable. For that 2000-view video, had I monetised, would have paid like a dollar.

Worth it?

Is it worth that hassle? Well that opening week on TikTok ramped my exposure for sure. I felt it across all the other platforms that following week.

Plus, we are stuck with vertical video and short-form content. Just look at anything being snapped with a cellphone these days and you will see a vertical-oriented phone clicking away.

See you on Instagram next…will upload the series there starting today. Will use their scheduling tool to pop one per every 6 hours and let’s see what happens.

The Sardine News can help you digitise your business. Taking processes online and onto cellphones, means you have a powerful internal company network at your fingers (IPN – Internal Private Network). Reaching to all your resources everywhere. Instantly. POS. Stock. Customers. Bookings. Transactions. Marketing. Accounts. Reports. Tasks. Communications.

Get in touch with Sean on +27793269671 or email umzimkulu@gmail.com.