We’d been doing our thing on the gram for about two years and finally felt like we were getting into our groove in creating reels. Instagram was pushing reels hard-core and we were adapting and finding a balance between static posts and reels. Then we talked to Brendan’s cousin (who works in marketing) about what else we could do to grow our SaverSisters business and she suggested TikTok. Nikki was already addicted to TikTok as a viewer but I had been avoiding it as just another time suck. We polled our Insta-fam to see if they wanted to see us make TikToks (they didn’t) but she assured us that it was a completely different audience and that companies wanted to see a presence on other social media platforms. So we went for it… and here are our thoughts.
INSTAGRAM REELS
In my opinion Instagram reels are relatively easy to make. I love that you can save your progress (although we’ve also learned the hard way that you should ALWAYS also save your draft to your phone because those glitches are REAL and you lose everything when they occur). Anyway, reels are easy to make and easy to edit.
The Instagram audience is generally kind and supportive over on reels but truthfully the biggest downside to reels is how hard it is for them to take off and gain traction. Even our best reels just don’t hit the numbers you will see over on TikTok, making them somewhat helpful in terms of follower growth when they do hit bigger numbers, but nothing that would it make it worthwhile for us to post a reel every day as Instagram is pushing. Our best posts tend to be in-store static posts and not reels.
The other main problem with reels is that you just don’t get the best engagement. Instagram users just don’t hit like very often and comments tend to be few and far between (again making it harder for reels to take off).
We both truly prefer reels in terms of creating but you don’t get the excitement watching them grow the way you do on TikTok.
INSTAGRAM REELS in 3 words: easy, kind, slow
TIKTOK
We dove straight into creating TikToks and I’ve gotta be honest- they just aren’t as easy to make as reels. Nikki and I generally create content over on reels, then save everything to our phone, and THEN upload the final product to TikTok because you can’t really edit things as easily if you work creating solely in the TikTok platform. The trending sounds are also not the same on both platforms- TikTok is definitely ahead of reels on popular sounds so it is a rare occasion when we can use the same sound for a video we post to both TikTok and Instagram.
Oh HELLO TikTok TROLLS!!!! Guys, we seriously did not realize how downright mean internet trolls could be! The fact that I just used the collective ‘Guys’ would have earned us some serious hatred. Brendan’s cousin was not lying when she assured us it would be a different audience. We’ll post a TikTok that we think is not in the least bit offensive and some internet troll will find something we’ve done wrong (uphold traditional gender roles, not recycle something… we’ve even been called out for not washing a plate thoroughly enough).
We don’t take it personally and typically laugh all the criticism off (not hard to do when the person’s profile pic is an avatar and not a real person) but TikTok is not for the faint of heart. We don’t typically post ourselves on there but a huge shout out to anyone who does because I’m sure they get trolled for every little thing about their appearance.
If you can get past the mean comments, TikTok is SO much easier to grow an audience on. We try to post consistently and when a video goes big, it seems to have a much greater capacity to reach a large audience. We’ve had a video hit 2.6 million on TikTok and our largest on Instagram is 750 thousand. We’ve noticed that people tend to hit follow and like much more readily over on TikTok and reached almost 10K on that platform in just a couple of months. We make our money mainly from link clinks so Instagram is the platform that allows that, although TikTok does let you put a website in your bio if people want something you’ve posted enough to go click there.
TIK TOK in 3 words: trolls, viral, young
Hope this helps anyone trying to create on either platform! We truly do feel that it has been good for us to be present on both platforms as the audience really is completely different. And from a non-creator standpoint we find it super interesting how different these platforms truly are.
