When you spend enough time in each platform you begin to detect patterns, subtle shifts in how the content is rewarded. This is NOT the same as understanding the algorithm because they are designed to be a mystery and are successful precisely because they can keep a secret.

Prior to Thanksgiving I was talking with a dear friend about TikTok and he said, “I’ve noticed if I use the title function native to TikTok, I say the title of that TikTok, and that title is also in the description, within the first 5 seconds – the content does better.”

As mentioned before, the platforms are fickle, and these observations are ephemeral but fascinating to me. So, I said “let’s test it.” To do this, we needed something that was scalable and repeatable. That content also needed to be around the same length for every video and the video needed to come out at the same time for the duration of the test.

For some context, in 2024 I created 2,367 TikTok videos across two accounts so this sort of test is highly valuable and measurable on accounts that post regularly. The test took place just over a month from Nov. 21 to Dec. 25 with the focus of the content being Christmas themed dad jokes.

Why?

Because a dad joke can be told in 15 seconds, and it doesn’t rely on content before it or after it to be understood. This is important because 98% of the views on TikTok come from search (66%) or from the “For You” tab (32.5%) This means if a user comes across the content we are trying to test, they have no context around what this channel normal makes and because of that needs to be understood without context.

The final set of variables was to use only a phone only so that the content would be created within the TikTok app. The location for each joke was different and we alternated the use of a Santa hat to see if that is a better signal for what the content is about. The jokes would made up 32% of the total content for that same period when 109 total TikTok videos were posted.

In the end 52% of the views would come by way of search with terms like Christmas jokes, Santa jokes, and Christmas dad jokes among the most used. 45% of the views came from the “For You” page leaving just 5% of the views from users who already followed the account.

When I worked in radio, we would have things within a show called “benchmarks” that the audience could count on to happen. A great, if outdated, example of this would be traffic and weather on the 1’s – the audience would know that at 6:01 they would know what was happening and if they missed it, they had five more chances. With a phone that sort of benchmarking is useless. But the lesson is not. When you are creating content for social media you need to set the expectation for the audience, especially if you don’t already have one. If you are just starting an account or starting a new one in 2025 if you post once a week randomly it will be much harder to build an audience than if you create the expectation that content on this channel arrives at 5p every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. In order to produce content at scale, you have to have a plan (duh). This test endorsed that theory.

What the data showed over the past 34 days is that if you post daily, each day the joke went up between 6a and 7a EST, and you follow that content up with content that resonates with your audiences the platform rewards that behavior. Every single piece of content performed better over those 34 days than in the 11 months prior.

To get more specific, the results of this experiment reveal a crucial insight about social media success – consistency and clear audience expectations are as vital as the quality of the content. By establishing a reliable posting schedule and maintaining thematic consistency through Christmas dad jokes, we created a measurable impact on engagement metrics. The 4500% increase in shares, coupled with triple-digit growth across views, likes, and comments, demonstrates that platforms like TikTok reward predictable content patterns. While individual “hacks” like title optimization may temporarily boost performance, the data suggests that sustained success comes from building reliable content rhythms that audiences can anticipate and engage with. This reinforces a fundamental principle of content creation – helping your audience (even if they aren’t your audience yet) to know exactly what to expect and when to expect it remains a powerful strategy for growing engagement.

Eric Hultgren

Director of Marketing – Midwest

Check out the videos:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erichultgren/
https://www.tiktok.com/@erichultgren