Choosing a Social Platform for a New Company
When a brand or business is choosing a social media platform, it is important to do research on the platform and determine if your target audience is present on that platform. I think it’s a safe bet to use the platform giants, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But when looking at new platforms, it can be a risky game to choose a platform that has not yet proven itself. I think of Vine as a platform that was popular but ultimately failed. If a company or organization were to have put all of their advertising efforts into a platform like Vine that eventually was axed by their owner, Twitter, then all those efforts will have been in vain.
In looking at new social platforms in the last year, Hubspot names six platforms as the ones to watch in 2021. I wanted to focus this post on Instagram Reels because I used it for my personal interest project. I had actually never heard of Reels before taking this course on social media management. But in using it for my personal interest project, I learned that Reels is a powerful tool for reaching a larger audience.
Reels was created to be a direct competitor of TikTok. The benefit of Reels is that users already have an established following on Instagram. I learned that using Reels on Instagram users can gain followers and reach more people who are not followers by creating a Reel. Below is an example of how a regular video performed versus how a Reel performed on my living_life_greenly Instagram account:
I only received 24 views on my video posted to my account, but my Reel reached over 1,000 views. I attribute that to the way the platform works; users just scroll through the Reel feed and stumble across these short videos. It should be noted that Reels can be found when a user searches for a specific hashtag that was used in the description of the Reel.
The first year of Reels has proven to be successful, but as we saw with Vine, Reels' future success and staying-power is not a sure thing. I personally think it will continue to be successful because the Instagram platform is one of the most popular social media platforms and is owned by the giant Facebook. Having both social media giants backing the platform Reels, I believe it will continue to be a success and become even more popular. Right now, Reels are only 30 seconds long compared to TikTok’s 60-second videos, a feature I can see changing in the future to keep up with TikTok’s popularity.
Demographics are another factor to consider when choosing a social media platform. In comparing TikTok to Reels, TikTok has a significantly younger audience. However, the platform is newer and is still establishing a loyal following. Instagram has been a successful platform for many years now and only seems to be growing, especially with the addition of Reels.
Overall, I think Instagram Reels would be a safe bet for a new company or organization to jump-start their social media presence. The winning factors are the already established audience and presence of users on Instagram, Reels' reach over traditional videos, and the proven success of Instagram and its parent company Facebook. TikTok is wildly successful but too young to be considered a safe bet for a new business or organization to start out on social media. A new company would benefit from Instagram and would grow exponentially by utilizing the Reels feature.
