SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY

TikTok vs Instagram: Is it one platform, or both, for marketers?

By our News Team | 2022

As TikTok grows at an astounding rate, do social media teams use one, or both? And what’s the strategy?

As the once-upstart TikTok social media platform continues to grow massively, is it now a viable alternative to Instagram for brands? Or do marketing strategies need to incorporate both platforms?

It’s a question that is being asked more frequently. Francisco Schmidberger, co-founder of the Link Agency marketing consultancy based in Beverly Hills in the US, ponders the question in a blog for the Marketing Dive website.

According to Schmidberger, marketers need to think about where their target audience is more likely to be. Is it with TikTok’s naturally unpolished shots or Instagram’s carefully crafted, slick content that has been perfected down to the last detail? 

Don’t jump into creating an account without a strategy and evaluating your audience, he warns.

Social media strategy

Photo by Cottonbro from Pexels

While TikTok is commonly associated with a younger audience of Gen Z and Millennial consumers, its age demographic is changing and over 50% are now older than 30.

“The biggest misconception is that TikTok’s audience is not right for your brand, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) marketing world due to users being too young. Aren’t the users mostly college students and recent grads?” he writes.

TikTok a massive opportunity for B2B marketers

“B2B businesses have a massive opportunity on TikTok that many competitors probably haven’t tapped into yet. Even if your target demographic isn’t currently Gen Z, it will likely be in the future.”

Schmidberger continues: “If you leverage TikTok’s benefits alongside Instagram, which still holds over 1-billion users, ensuring a holistic audience range, you are in for a treat. Take the budget European airline Ryanair, for example, with 1.5-million followers on TikTok alongside a whopping 794,000 on Instagram (as of January 2022).”

He believes that if marketers are looking for brand awareness and visibility, TikTok may be the best way to generate organic impressions due to the nature of the platform.

We, as businesses, have become so caught up trying to maximise reach by growing a huge following, but TikTok offers an alternative — its algorithm rewards content above everything else, he observes.

“On Instagram there is no single algorithmic rule that explains how users explore content. But through using Feed, Explore or Reels, Instagram creates a pipeline of algorithms based on interaction patterns like comments, likes, shares and video views. Instead, TikTok’s ‘For You’ feed is based on three different factors: user interactions, video information and device account settings,” he explains.

Schmidberger’s takeaway for marketers is that TikTok is all about bite-sized, entertaining video content. Instagram, on the other hand, is still recognised for more static content. But IGTV videos appear four times more frequently on Instagram’s Explore than photos. So, adding videos to your content strategy for both TikTok and Instagram can boost profile visits and build a community. 

“Remember, Instagram and YouTube content replicated over TikTok often doesn’t perform well, but TikTok content being reused on Instagram Reels does,” he says.

Read the full blog here: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/tiktok-and-instagram-using-both-platforms-for-ultimate-success/617002/

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