 So one of the things that comes with doing this for as long as I have is that you see things come and go. I often think of how I see musicians act like the sky is falling when nothing's really happening. It kind of reminds me of how people drive in LA when it rains, as if it's the first time they've ever seen rain and it's time to panic. Anyway, every week I see musicians lose their mind about Instagram dying when it's more like it's getting older and maturing. And you know, to quote one of the classic movies. That would be philosophy, so it'd be a flap since we're gonna know we're all dying. But here's the thing, Instagram isn't dying. It's more relevant than ever. And if you think I'm wrong, you should definitely stick around. So in this video, I'm gonna explain how Instagram and TikTok work together as well as the differences between them. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon, a music marketing nerd who's teaching musicians how to grow their fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. And this is Muse Formation. Okay, so let's be real here. There's no doubt TikTok is eating Instagram's lunch, especially when it comes to engagement and time spent on the app. And when it comes to growing your audience as much as reels are really helping some musicians, TikTok is just so much more explosive. And no one would argue the amount of growth and reach you get from TikTok is unparalleled by any platform we've ever seen before in the social media era. But so many of you that I talk to act as if this is a game and you should only root for the winner. Instead of just seeing one as a hammer and the other as a screwdriver which are both two different tools for two different jobs that get things you need to get done, done. So explain what the function of each app is so you can understand how to use them. Let's start with where it all started. The Instagram grid. It's the place where you put your greatest hits and your biggest announcements and pieces of content. Seriously, just think of your grid as the place where the best of you goes as well as a place to use captions to tell stories around your music. And if you don't know what I mean by that please hit the description and watch my playlist on storytelling around your music. And along with highlighted stories in your profile and your bio, this should be where someone can easily see what you have going on and get a very good sense of if they wanna go deeper with you and check out your music. Whereas TikTok posts should be thought of as your ambassadors that go to a new person who doesn't know you and shows how great it would be to spend time with you. It's a place to aggregate your fans who are doing cool things around your music. A place to show your existing fans your personality and lifestyle where you can use duets and stitches to go deeper on your personality or promote what fans share around your music or interact with your micro genre's culture. As long as it's thrilling content that will keep people scrolling and it belongs here and it will actually get recommended and grow people's awareness of you and your music. But here's the thing to understand about the difference between the two. Would people do news posts on TikTok like we have a gig at the Height Beast Playhouse October 18th or even big events like new album out now? You know what happens? Like five to 10% of your followers will see it. As compared to Instagram where you're likely to have most of them see it. To get a grasp on this that's a massive failure along the lines of how bad Facebook updates are. And the metrics you see for how many people see news updates on TikTok if it's just a straight news update is less than half of how many people just read the subject line of an email update. And this even goes for musicians with millions of followers. I watch some of my favorite artists with rabid fanbases get 50 likes on their album drop posts because literally no one sees it. This is because TikTok is unlike any other social network we've ever seen and I think people really don't get this. This is because unlike Instagram TikTok is not for news announcements unless you make them in a TikTok format. And while you need to do them TikTok literally does not show them to people unless you do them in a compelling way people want to watch to the end. This is by design and TikTok has no interest in being what Instagram is as a news feed where people do life updates or post flyers for events. And if you want proof look at the latest news of what TikTok's latest product update is. Instead of trying to become the hub of news as every other social network has done when they have become the number one place people spend time on the internet TikTok has said, that we're going to do 10 minute video uploads to compete with YouTube instead. TikTok wants content other people enjoy not your updates. And they're confident if people build relationships with you on their app they will go to other places where you do updates which is why they let you link your Instagram or YouTube because they know if you're building relationships with fans and they're interacting with you the fans will come back here and keep growing with their relationship with you and the platform they found the artist they like on. But TikTok would rather you follow your favorite careers elsewhere for your news updates and they will handle showing their users your most engaging content while the other social networks can have less fun stuff since they are banking on that being a winning strategy and you know what? They've been winning with that strategy. I mean, they even let you do a link in bio page which speaking of now is a perfect time to introduce you to the sponsor of this video Koji. Koji is a free link in bio app that in my opinion is the best way to give a first impression and show all you have going on and most of all link to your Spotify so people who get to know you on Instagram and TikTok go deeper on your music and learn about it. Koji really is one of the best first impressions that can show everybody everything you have going on but it's so much more than all the other link in bio apps Koji is a link in bio app store for creators. It offers a free to use, free to customize link in bio platform and is truly the best link in bio for musicians. I mean, just look at these profiles. They look amazing and that can all be done for free but here's the thing. You've probably seen ones like Linktree but Koji has this app store where you can do amazing experiences for fans to get to know you, interact with them, build relationships and even make money. And I wanna say, these are not iOS apps, nothing to download. These are link in bio apps that live on the link in your bio on all your socials 24 seven. So let me show you a few of these apps that I find to be amazing for music marketing. Fund My Project allows you to crowd fund your album or single directly on your social media whereas Link Locker allows you to charge for private Zoom concerts or any other live stream. You can make it intimate or invite the whole world to it. Oh yeah, and if you use Calendly at all to schedule things like lessons or consultations with musicians they have a full integration that makes it super smooth to book through that in your link in bio. And lastly, there's the love jar. Since most people are streaming your music for free why not let them drop you a note about how much you and your music means to them and show you some financial love as well since they can donate whatever they would like. I recently made a video that gives a thorough tour of Koji and my suggestions for building a profile that's effective for you as a musician. So go learn more and get your free Koji link in bio page for your socials and head to the description to click on my link or do with Koji.com That's W-I-T-H-K-O-J-I.com So as I was saying I really believe that TikTok and Instagram are reciprocal relationship and two things that should not be seen as incompetent instead two tools you use. So let me explain that more since you're probably wondering how to think of the piece of this you probably use the most which are probably Instagram stories. I like to see Instagram stories as the place on social media where you build relationships with your fans. No matter what anyone tells you about interactions with TikTok eclipsing Instagram every music fan still knows that if they want to see the real life personality and details of what an artist is really like Instagram stories are where that happens. And I really see stories as the best place to build a relationship with fans still since TikTok kind of has this fake facade of performance still and it's not that it's not where somebody goes to cry and confess and show who they really are. It's not the place for vulnerability often either but Instagram stories are. It really is the place where you could overshare with barely any consequences and often have it rewarded when you do. Whereas the second you overshare on TikTok and put up mid-grade material you most often get no reward since TikTok wants your content that fits the trumps they like in the format that spreads for them. If you don't get that just remember I answer every question in the comments below. But at this point it probably feels like I've been obscuring the fact that TikTok was cloned by Instagram in the form of reels. And yes they have but the big caveat I have with saying TikTok was cloned is reels just aren't as good as TikTok at making the magic sauce of finding exactly what you wanna see on the app. They don't offer the explosive growth and engagement or followers or jumping the curiosity gap to hear the songs they are enjoying and streaming them on Spotify. I mean, how often are you hearing about songs that are blowing up from Instagram reels compared to TikTok? Let's get real here. So how do you handle this since Instagram has this reels function sitting right there that can help you get new fans and you want new fans? So let me give you an easy decision tree. If your fans are going to be nothing but people over 30 well you should probably favor reels over TikTok a bit. If there's no way you could be bothered to make TikTok style videos I have bad news since reels aren't really any different. So that's just a border in your brain but if you could find definitive proof that your genre isn't really active on TikTok then you should do reels first. Otherwise here's what I do and we're about to complicate things by bringing YouTube into the equation. So let's say you've done what 98% of you should do and chosen to focus on TikTok for your shorter ambassador type content that is designed to give new listeners a glimpse at you and make them curious to go deeper and listen to your music. What I would do is decide whether you care more about growing subscribers on YouTube or followers on Instagram. Now that's a complicated question obviously but here's the thing. I tend to find if you post short content on YouTube shorts, Instagram reels and TikTok the chances are that a fan already saw it on another and swipe past it, cannibalizes the content and makes it less effective. So I say lean into two of them and skip the other one. YouTube shorts have largely been ineffective for most people getting followers but if you have engaged fans there feeding them and building relationships can be effective. Oh yeah and if you're liking this video you should really be subscribed and get notified since this is what we talk about here. But speaking of that whole cannibalizing thing I got a nice trick for you. Since most of the content we're making for TikTok in short form is pretty evergreen. I like to delay posting it to the second short form platform either YouTube shorts or Instagram reels and we're gonna delay posting it there by three to seven days for whichever one you choose as your second priority platform. So that way the likelihood of the cannibalization occurring goes down. The space between posting also allows fans who are busy and not engaged on both apps one week to potentially see it later. I know both TikTok and reels have a long tail in that the content can still get bigger significant weeks later or sometimes even months later. But I really have seen a lot of people have success with this delayed content approach. But you're probably wondering about another crucial feature of both apps and whether you should be using Instagram or TikTok Live. So this one is interesting as they are nearly identical except one feature that matters which TikTok allows you to schedule a live in advance and then it advertises it to your followers as they show them your videos and it also puts a reminder that you're going live on your profile. For that and TikTok's explosive growth I do like using it better for going live but here's the thing. The thing I hear over and over again is TikTok's users just aren't looking for the live content they're looking for the ADD scroll of the app. So when you're choosing which one to go live with with say another musician where you get a chat about what you both do first off choose the app where you both have more engagement but if that engagement is negligible between the both of you I would build on TikTok instead. Especially if you've decided that TikTok is a focus for you and you're concerned about Instagram's dwindling engagement but I do want to talk about how the apps are similar and first I want to say the comments and interactions with fans is where fans are really made. You should be seeing the interactions you have in your comments as well as those who are in your community and if you don't know what I mean by community I highly suggest you hit the description and click on my video on that as it's one of the most important for building your early fan base. Anyway one way to look at both apps is so much of your interactions with fans and musicians in your micro genre are the big work of building community and getting early fans and that's done by talking to people and having genuine interactions in the comments. So don't sleep on either app when it comes to doing that. It's all the more reason if you're skeptical about going on TikTok to get over there. Lastly and to piggyback more on why those videos on how to build community are so important is that you need to know the right hashtags to put on your posts. This is so much of the secret sauce on both apps and to find in the most passionate fans that give you your early fans since those are the type of people who follow hashtags and TikTok really uses those hashtags to figure out who they should be serving your content to. So you need to do your research on which hashtags work best for your posts and oftentimes the hashtags will be similar across both platforms but doing your research will help make sure you optimize them for both platforms. So to wrap up I think seeing TikTok as a place to grow your music and build relationships is great but let's remember Instagram is still where your deepest fans will go to stay updated with you. So keeping on both is crucial these days and understanding the borders of each is extremely helpful to grow your fan base. Okay on the screen now is a video on how to find community like I was just talking about or how to blow up on TikTok or how to grow your fan base from zero to 10,000 fans. Click and keep learning. Thanks for watching.