“I need a strategy for our YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Can you help me? I can’t build my business without it.”
I’ve heard that line before. Let’s talk about it.
First of all, before you jump into creating content for those platforms, make sure that your business and marketing strategies are solid, and that you know exactly what you want out of each platform. There may even be a chance that content might not be your best play!
Assuming that’s all squared away, let’s prioritize. It’s extremely demanding to create successful content on even a single platform. To avoid spinning your wheels and ending up with hundreds of posts that aren’t hitting the mark, let’s talk about how to choose a platform to prioritize.
YouTube: If you’re trying to create an audience that will spend a lot of time with you and will be heavily engaged, YouTube is by far the best of the four platforms for you. Depth of content and entertainment value will play a large part in your success. However, YouTube content creation is resource-intensive: you’ll need to conceptualize, shoot, and edit a ton of footage. In addition, YouTube is almost always a long-term play. It can take a long time to hit your stride and pick up steam in the algorithm, so be prepared for a bit of a commitment. That said, if you’re successful, a YouTube audience is by far the most valuable out of the social platforms.
TikTok: By contrast to YouTube, TikTok offers explosive and immediate growth potential. If you get your content right, you’ll be able to get massive views right away. However, due to the nature of the platform, the type of engagement you’ll get will be heavily dependent on entertainment value. If you want to deliver a deeper message, it will be challenging. Creating content for TikTok can be efficient, but you’ll want to spend a lot of time on ideation to make sure that each post has a lot of potential and is hyper-concentrated in its delivery.
Facebook: In terms of rapid growth potential, Facebook is similar to TikTok. The platform is ready and willing to distribute your content past your followers, so a great post can very easily take off. However, the algorithm tends to favor videos that are over 3 minutes, which can be a challenging length of time to keep your viewers engaged for. If you’re able to hit the mark, however, you’ll see sustained viewership for as long as you’re producing great content — much like YouTube but comparatively shallower loyalty from your audience.
Instagram: Instagram is interesting because in a lot of cases, content that works well on TikTok and Facebook will tend to perform well on it as well. It doesn’t have the rapid growth potential of those platforms due to the nature of the feed (your content only extends past your followers in the Explore page), but you are able to hit the biggest overall hybrid of demographics when compared to all the other platforms. Essentially, it’s 2021’s “home base” social media platform. Follower loyalty is moderate — a bit lower than facebook, but not as low as TikTok.
I hope this summary helps you to understand some of the strengths and weaknesses of these platforms, so that you can make an informed decision before you jump in! Remember, it’s all about figuring out for yourself where your priorities lie when it comes to speed of growth, loyalty, and production resources.
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