Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have heard of TikTok or even been sent a TikTok video. Known for its viral dances and easy to digest content, TikTok has rapidly grown in popularity and now boasts 30.8 million daily active users. Many businesses are keen to tap into this large audience and have started to include TikTok in their marketing plans, even favouring it over more ‘traditional’ forms of social media. As a marketing agency, we often get asked if Instagram and YouTube are still relevant, and whether companies should focus on TikTok. We share our thoughts below!

Instagram and YouTube have a more varied audience
For most businesses, Instagram and YouTube provide a better target market. TikTok has been dominated by Gen Z since its launch and that is showing no signs of changing. This is great news if your business is targeted at Gen Z but bad news if it isn’t. The limited audience range makes it difficult to promote your business, whilst in comparison, Instagram and YouTube have a varied user base so no matter how niche your business is, you’ll be able to find an audience for what you offer.

Instagram and YouTube are more business friendly
TikTok is widely known for its informal and light hearted content with trends and dances becoming particularly popular. This means there is less scope for selling products and services effectively, particularly when you compare it to Instagram and YouTube which actively make it easier to sell your products/services through features like clickable links. Whilst you can of course use trending audios and take part in challenges, the chances are that very few of these are going to be suitable for your business.

Instagram offers more format options
Chances are when it comes to your products or services, you need to get a certain amount of information across. This is where Instagram and YouTube can reign supreme over TikTok. Both these platforms allow you to post longer format videos, letting you get all the information across whereas TikTok is more geared to short, snappy content. Instagram also gives you more options on how you’d like to present your content, including images, stories, longer captions, reels and videos. This makes it easier to create varied content that will appeal to a wider audience, as some people will prefer image content over video.

Instagram and YouTube deliver better results
Whilst it can be tempting to focus all your energy on TikTok videos because of its popularity, the goal of any business’s social media is to increase brand awareness and revenue. For most businesses, lead generation on TikTok is going to be significantly smaller because the target market is not going to be as wide as Instagram or YouTube. That’s why we recommend focusing social media marketing efforts on Instagram or YouTube, ahead of TikTok.

Whilst there are pros to using TikTok and it does have a large user base, the core issue with it is that for most businesses, their target audience is not going to be on it. You may get video views but if they’re not engaging with your business, endless views aren’t going to help you.

Struggling with social media and need help with your digital marketing strategy? Give us a call on 01566 232323 or email us at hello@mihidigital.co.uk