TikTok Talk: How Trump's Savvy Substantial Social Media Strategy Bridged The Generation Gap

Posted • November 27, 2024: President-Elect Donald Trump's election campaign went places no Republican had ever gone before. In a strategy to win younger voters, Trump's team tapped the power and reach of podcasts and alternative social media. Surprisingly, one of his team's biggest captures was TikTok. While Kamala's TikTok team had several Gen Zers, cringe and ultimately excuses, the Trump team was leaner, smarter and more focused on policy. -- Greg Price @greg_price11: “Kamala advisor Stephanie Cutter: "I can't tell you how many friends of mine or nieces and nephews would say to me 'you know I'm getting these things from Trump all the time on TikTok.'" I was one of the two guys who ran the Team Trump TikTok account. Keep in mind that Kamala had a whole team running their TikTok, while we had the simplest of simple TikTok operations going at Trump HQ. It was literally just two of us.”

“When we took over in August, Team Trump was at around 300K followers while Kamala HQ had 3M. By the end of the campaign, we lapped them in followers (it's at 8.1M today). Forbes recently wrote a story about the two campaigns on TikTok where they noted "while Harris was reaching a consistent audience more often, Trump was reaching a larger audience overall." TikTok was a powerful tool in this election. I firmly believe it played a major role in the Gen Z shift toward President Trump. Team Kamala was so proud of the TikTok cringe they posted on a daily basis. But, at the end of the day, all the brat memes in the world can't manufacture authenticity where there is none. We were lucky enough to be able to promote a winning message for a President made for this moment. And I'm certainly very happy that the family members of Kamala's team enjoyed our content!” -- Trump's two-member team slaughtered Kamala's army of TikTokers.

There's only so far one can go with a superficial and fake candidate like Kamala. In the end, Trump's team had more substance and real stuff to work with that young voters responded to. […] Trump didn't win the youth vote. But, the strategy of going where young people get their news paid off. Youth shifted dramatically to the right with Trump getting 46% of their votes. He did win young men, who broke for Trump at 56%. This was huge in securing his return to the White House. (…)

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https://twitchy.com/warren-squire/2024/11/27/kamala-trump-tiktok-battle-n2404354