News companies navigate one of the most competitive landscapes in social video. Attention is fragmented, algorithms keep shifting, and audience behaviours vary widely across regions.

But the publishers growing fastest on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have something in common: They track the right performance signals.

Using Tubular’s video intelligence, with detailed looks at examples from across the world over the last three months, let’s break down the four essential metrics every news team should monitor to strengthen social strategy, drive more views, and earn consistent engagement.

1. Video duration

Video duration is one of the biggest levers for performance on short-form platforms. When we look at Latin America, for example, Tubular data shows a significant mismatch between what publishers upload most and what audiences actually engage with.

While most TikTok uploads in the region fall between one and two minutes, the videos that drive the highest average engagement per upload are actually in the five- to 10-minute range.

Why this matters for news publishers: For years, publishers have been cutting long news videos into short TikTok-friendly snippets, but long-form is now proving its appeal for news audiences.

How to act on it: Stop thinking of TikTok as only for shorts. Test five- to 10-minute formats, especially explainers, interviews, and event recaps. Latin American publishers who do are outperforming peers relying on quick-hit clips.

2. Best time to post

The right timing can significantly expand your reach, but it’s not always obvious when that is.

In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), for example, most publishers post to Instagram between 14:00-14:59 UTC. However, Tubular data shows the 16:00-16:59 UTC window delivers notably better performance, including 14% more views and 17% more engagements.

Just a two-hour shift produces double-digit gains.

Why this matters for publishers: If your Instagram performance has plateaued, timing — not content — may be the culprit. Audiences and algorithms both behave differently depending on hour and day.

How to act on it: Audit your posting schedule quarterly. A small shift in timing can produce outsized improvements in reach and engagement.

3. Trending topics

In fast-moving news cycles, what you cover matters just as much as how you cover it.

Trending topics and hashtags act as a real-time map of audience attention. They show which stories, regions, and political moments are capturing interest at scale. For publishers, understanding this momentum is crucial for informing editorial planning, strengthening discoverability, and ensuring your coverage aligns with what viewers are actively searching for and engaging with.

In the Asia-Pacific region (APAC), for example, at least eight of the top hashtags with the highest engagement are tied to the Bihar elections in India, underscoring the region’s intense political interest. At the same time, Korean-language hashtags such as #news and #newsdesk placed high on the list, showing the power of local-language labeling to boost reach.

In North America, politics also dominate the conversation on YouTube, but rather than Indian elections, #Trump is the most engaging hashtag.

Why this matters for publishers: Algorithms don’t just reward good content; they reward good content that organically contributes to active, high-volume conversations. Understanding regional topic momentum helps teams prioritise coverage and tag content more effectively.

How to act on it: Track fast-rising news hashtags weekly. When you see sustained velocity, commit to deeper coverage and consistent tagging to ride the wave.

4. Top-performing videos

Two of the quarter’s biggest U.S. news and politics video moments couldn’t be more different, but they tell a clear story.

The video logging the most engagement related to news and politics in the last 90 days came from HuffPost, which posted a clip of Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech accompanied by the headline, “New York Will Remain A City Of Immigrants.”

In just two weeks, the video drove 7.2 million engagements, fueled largely by comments and shares.

Meanwhile, the most-viewed video of the same timeframe came from a much smaller publisher: Fox 32 Chicago, a local news station. Its nine-second TikTok clip showing a protester being thrown down by an ICE officer amassed 178 million views in two months.

The video’s explosive reach underscores a broader pattern in social news consumption: Short, high-impact moments tied to polarising or fast-moving events tend to spread rapidly across platforms.

The bottom line

A winning social video strategy requires more than producing “good content.” It requires tracking — and acting on — the metrics that shape visibility:

• Video duration.
• Posting time.
• Trending topics and hashtags.
• Cross-platform traction.

News publishers who continuously optimise for these four signals are the ones capturing more attention, more views, and more engagement — no matter how the algorithms shift.

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