Due to the sharp, fast and powerful growth of TikTok, conversations are gradually beginning to appear: does Instagram have a future, will TikTok take Instagram’s place, and is it possible to use only TikTok now and gradually abandon Instagram.
In this article, we will analyze the advantages and disadvantages of each of these social networks, in what format we can use them and where each of these networks fits into the marketing strategy.
Instagram: Pros
Instagram has several distinct advantages.
Universality of the audience
The first is, of course, the audience – today it is 59 million active monthly audience, according to Mediascope. Instagram is now an absolutely universal social network. According to statistics, everyone is here: schoolchildren, students, heads of large companies and even factory directors, housewives, managers, the creative class – people working in different companies and different fields.
There is no specific geographic reference of the application: people from the capitals, other cities, villages and countries.
Sales focus
Instagram really has a huge sales market: clothes, cosmetics, printing services, information products and more. This is a kind of “shoptainment” – shopping and entertainment, sales through entertainment.
“Shoptainment” is an important trend in modern shopping, in particular online shopping, and it is clearly expressed in Instagram: people like to watch content related to products that is presented in an interesting way.
In Instagram, they buy from a specific person. For example, if a person wants to buy an air conditioner, he goes to Google, types “buy air conditioner” and chooses the best one in terms of price and quality. If a person wants to buy an air conditioner through Instagram, he finds the most pleasant seller of air conditioners and buys from him.
Multi-format Instagram
Instagram started as a completely visual social network. Now it is a universal platform: there are short videos, super-short videos and stories, there are lives, regular posts, guides, masks and more.
A huge number of formats are aggregated, there is a large selection of ways to communicate with the audience: in texts, in short stories, in long series of stories, in live broadcasts.
Instagram: cons
High entry threshold
Instagram has a lot of competition for the audience’s attention and the entry threshold is constantly growing, that is, it is becoming more and more difficult to promote without a budget. But in general, this is the property of any marketing tool – as soon as it becomes popular, it cannot remain free, because then everyone will use it, and its effectiveness will disappear. The auction system is turned on, and the value of the tool begins to grow rapidly. Therefore, it is difficult to promote on Instagram without a budget.
Lack of organic growth
You will grow for a very long time due to content. Even with regular publication of posts and stories, the likelihood that you will get a hundred thousand subscribers due to content is very low.
Niche Occupancy
If you take any niche and want to make a thematic blog, most likely, there are already tens of thousands of such accounts on Instagram. Just in case, we emphasize that this does not mean that the 10,001st will be unsuccessful or will not solve its problems. It’s just that you will no longer be able to completely tie the niche to yourself so that everyone who was interested in it would associate it with you.
TikTok: Pros
Powerful Organic Growth
Now in TikTok, everything is exactly the opposite of Instagram – here you can do almost everything for free. All the big accounts that exist now got the bulk of their audience due to the top recommendations. This is how TikTok is built – even if you have a small number of subscribers, you need to post a number of videos to convey to the algorithm what your video is about, who will be interested in them. The algorithm will try to show them to different people, form a portrait of your target audience for itself. And after that, you will have a large, powerful natural growth. People start subscribing because your video is recommended.
TikTok has a lot of mechanics for this: recommendations, the hashtag format that works here, the hashtag challenge format. TikTok has paid tools – advertising with bloggers and targeting – but they are now focused on other tasks: mentioning a product, a product, sales. If your task is to attract an audience, you do not need to buy paid tools for this.
Low density of many niches
TikTok is now Instagram in 2014, when you can come and do everything for free. At the same time, a lot of niches are not yet occupied.
There are more crowded niches – for example, language teachers are active on TikTok. The legal niche is also very densely represented. But still hundreds of times less densely than on Instagram.
TikTok: Cons
Audience
The first minus is the audience. But it should be noted that the audience is gradually maturing. The content is becoming more and more serious, as everywhere else, it is divided into segments: there are children’s dances, and there is serious, educational business content. But nevertheless, the audience is not universal: it is possible to promote the B2B format of a printing house, but it is probably not possible to promote B2B freight elevators.
A complex sales process
If on Instagram you can create a store inside an account, you can sell inside posts, make selling stories, transfer to a website, then in TikTok there are fewer sales opportunities. If you introduce sales in videos – in 15 seconds or per minute – then this will disrupt the organic nature, now it is not in demand, and there are no alternative formats yet.
One of the key sales methods now is transfer to Instagram.
Mono-format
There are three formats in TikTok: 15-second video, 60-second video and live. There are subtypes – duets, use of masks, etc. – but this is more or less all video content with cool editing functions, effects, but without the ability to embed a large text and somehow diversify communication with the audience.
What to choose: TikTok or Instagram?
As we can see, both have their pros and cons. What should you choose? Here are a few points.
These are, of course, not mutually exclusive platforms. Moreover, they complement each other very well.
Instagram – for work here and now. Of all the social networks, Instagram gives the fastest and most pronounced result, so it is great to sell and promote in it, expecting to get an effect now.
TikTok is good to use for long-term promotion. Now is the time to occupy a niche, receive dividends in the form of a loyal audience, subscribers, recognition, but the effect in sales will be later – in a couple of years.
You need to divide the strategy: Instagram should be run in the format of operational promotion, distribution, sales, and TikTok – in the format of long-term promotion, work for the future.
Both social networks intersect very well with each other. From TikTok, we can bring this audience to Instagram – in the TikTok account, there is an option to put a link to an Instagram account. TikTok gives a good increase in Instagram. And vice versa, when we duplicate our TikToks in stories, this gives an influx of audience from Instagram to TikTok.
In addition, Instagram has a Reels format, an analogue of TikTok – short, up to 30 seconds, videos. As a result, there may be a partially unified content strategy for them.
We recommend developing each of the social networks, but in terms of priority, put Instagram in first place, then YouTube, TikTok and other social networks. Visit our website to learn more about promotion.
