Staff Blog Series – Aly
TikTok is a short-form video sharing social media platform that offers its users a wide range of editing tools. TikTok originally pulled a fan base of predominantly young users creating 15 second clips of themselves lip-syncing to trendy songs. Despite the deceptively simple premise of the platform, TikTok has a great engagement rate. This is because viewers are encouraged to interact with posters content which in turn will result in a carefully customized selection of content the TikTok algorithm thinks you’ll find interesting – they call this the “for you page”.
Despite getting its start with a very young user base, TikTok saw a spike in older users as adults found themselves home bound during coronavirus. This massive growth of older users snowballed into adults spending less time on Instagram and TikTok gaining attention from brands and advertisers looking to share content on the next big social media platform. Cue the panic from the social media king Instagram.
Like anything, instagram is a business. If users start spending their time elsewhere Instagram makes less money. With its nearly identical concepts its clear that when Instagram launched the new feature Reels was in direct rebuttal to the attention the app was losing as TikTok grew in popularity.
Reels are currently a 15 second (compared to the minute long time allotment from TikTok) video sharing feature located within your instagram account. Many of the features are nearly identical. The bonus with Reels is that you will be sharing content directly to an already established and relevant audience. The downside is that the time limit is much shorter than on TikTok and many instagram users are already growing annoyed with the overload of content options available within the instagram app.
While we don’t see Reels stealing away viewers from TikTok anytime soon, we think it’s important to view Reels as a new creative outlet specifically for brands that will allow them to create fresh content and organically attract a much wider follower base. The biggest pull with Reels being that in contrast to an Instagram feed post the format of a Reel is less formal and offers the viewers a chance to see more of the personality behind a brand.
Want to learn more how our team can incorporate either of these platforms into your social media marketing campaign? Get in touch with a member of our social media team to learn more!