TikTok And Instagram: 3 Weeks Into My Experiment
So, Instagram grew slow and TikTok blew up with followers. What does this mean for writers?
About two weeks ago, I started paid advertising on my TikTok and Instagram. I promised that I’d update you, and here’s what happened so far. May this help you figure out what your social media game should look like.
My followers grew, but not as fast as I was promised.
I still got growth. I still got fans, but it’s nowhere near the 3,500 I was expecting. However, I still got a couple hundred followers on Instagram with Upgrowth. TikTok blew up. I went from 200 followers to over 1,100. Wow!
The followers are real. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be interacting with my content. I’ve gotten more likes on TikTok. Instagram has been laggy, but it’s still working too. As you can see, I slowly have been working my way upward.
Now, let’s see how this worked for my actual Substack reads...
So, no cap, Instagram picked up a bit of reads. In the past 30 days, I got two new free subscribers. TikTok, on the other hand? I got six-ish views, which is up from zero prior.
Honestly, here’s what my findings revealed:
Yes, both seem to have real followers, but they rarely interact with your content. I love seeing my follower numbers grow, but I’m not seeing as many conversions as I hoped I would.
I briefly got out of the 200-view jail of TikTok, then promptly landed back in it. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, if I’m doing anything wrong. I like to think my commentaries are good advice—primarily because I made my TikTok mostly about dating because I discuss it a bit here. So, I don’t know what’s up with that.
Instagram has actually done really well in terms of interactions. This is a nice surprise. I mean, the link clicks alone prove something’s good. I might start running ads or something.
Here’s my verdict on both ad campaigns so far…
It’s been about three weeks. I’ll give them another month before I totally make my judgment, because marketing does take time. So far, I’m not totally impressed with them, but the proof is there: some folks use Insta and TikTok for a read.
I can see this strategy might work well for the subject of dating. Assuming it wouldn’t work well for income inequality?
I can’t speak for Instagram, but Tiktok likes and rewards posting a lot. My fastest growth rate on Tiktok was when I was posting FIVE TIMES A DAY, the same kind of content. I was able to keep that up for like two months but not if I wanted to start writing consistently again, so now I aim for three a day, whatever content I want, and I grow more slowly.
As for IG, I have no idea. That platform is an enigma to me.