Founded by Mashable, Social Media Day was formed “as a way to recognize social media’s impact on global communication and to bring the world together to celebrate it.” It is a day of creative celebration by online creators and businesses to come together and communicate with each other. In honor of this, we’re sharing tips on two growing platforms, TikTok and Instagram Reels.

TikTok

With over 1 billion active users TikTok has grown exponentially since the transition of Musical.ly and ByteDance on November 10th, 2017, to the merge of TikTok itself on August 2nd, 2018.

TikTok has the perfect combination of accessible and interesting videos for users to watch, quick and easy, which turns into hours of scrolling. They created a “For You Page” where it is highly personalized to each user and changes content as a user’s behavior and preferences on the app change.

TikTok also has a wide variety of content to choose from. Whether it is cooking videos, dances, skits, or DIY tutorials, you are guaranteed to find a set of people you share common interests with.

Instagram Reels

On August 5, 2020, Instagram announced the addition of Instagram Reels as a competitor to TikTok and a new way to share short videos with your followers and the rest of the platform.

Users can create 15-second videos and use different audios, effects, and other creative tools provided by Instagram. Not only are these videos shared to your follower’s feed, but they are also shared on the Explore page where it is shared with the greater Instagram community, and on the Reels tab which is similar to TikTok’s “For You Page”.

Taking Advantage of TikTok and Reels

TikTok and Instagram reels are very similar in the way that they can expand an account’s reach fairly quickly.

For example, TikTok uses video likes and shares, accounts followed, comments posted, content created, videos completed, and favorites to not only create the personalized For You Page but also to recommend your videos to other users. In addition, because they do not look at follower count or previous videos that have done well, it is a really good platform for accounts with a low following to get their foot in the social media world. The best ways to ensure your TikToks are going well are to utilize trending sounds and apply them in a way that is relevant to your brand.

Similarly, Instagram uses user affinity to decide what recommended reels show up in a user’s reel tab as well as what new accounts see the reels a user posts. Instagram also notices if a user’s content is gaining a lot of likes and comments and will reward that so it is important to get your followers to consistently engage in the content. The best way to work with the Instagram algorithm is to create inviting content that is visually appealing and captures an audience.

Lastly, it is important to remember although these platforms seem very similar, they are not the same. Instagram favors the more aesthetic, visually appealing videos, whereas TikTok favors the more authentic and original content. Not everything posted to Instagram will perform the same as it will on TikTok and not everything posted to TikTok will perform the same as it will on Instagram.

With these tips and tricks, you can use both TikTok and Instagram Reels to boost your accounts.
Happy content creation!