TikTok & Instagram・Organic Growth

[embraceone]

Hello everyone.

As you know, I deleted Instagram and vowed never to use it again.

But I changed my mind after getting TikTok.

I’m utterly fascinated by this application since getting it, because I was able to gain a couple of followers fairly quickly without doing anything except posting my first two videos. I didn’t like any content, and followed absolutely nobody.

My Favourite Aspect of TikTok

I like it in particular because one doesn’t need to worry so much about video & photo quality, unlike Instagram which I obsess over to a ridiculous degree.

Have a look at my Instagram account and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Instagram vs. Tiktok・The Great Experiment

I want to test something very simple:

Is it possible to grow absolutely organically on TikTok without liking or following anything or anyone, using only the posting feature, with niche, but largely low quality regular video content.

I then wish to compare this to Instagram growth in an identical fashion.

I’ll leave photos of both of my accounts so that comparison can be made at regular intervals.

What You Should Know About my Instagram Account

• I have over 60k real, industry relevant followers
• I haven’t posted in 6 months
• My account trust score is excellent
• I’m following nobody

What You Should Know About my TikTok Account

• I started this week
• It’s practically non-existent
• I’m following nobody

Comparing Organic Growth on Instagram & TikTok

There are some things I’ll be doing identically, and other things I won’t be doing identically.

Firstly: I’m going to give Instagram an unfair advantage by posting extremely high quality content, but I won’t be posting nearly as frequently as on TikTok in order to balance things out a bit. I think that this is an interesting juxtaposition.

On both platforms going forward, I will not be liking a single photo or video from anyone while I run these tests indefinitely.

I want to see how much organic growth and engagement will be possible on each platform, under their current circumstances, with nothing except captions, content and hashtags.

I don’t intend to use paid ads on either account, nor do I intend on buying engagement of any kind whatsoever.

It will be interesting in itself to see what kind of engagement I get on Instagram under these pretenses.

Some Notes Regarding What I’ll Be Doing on Both Apps

Instagram Posts

• I’ll be posting 1 - 2 times a week
• I’ll only be posting the best photo and video content with engaging captions and an excellent array of hashtags

TikTok Posts

• I’ll be posting 4 - 6 times a week (got to keep that sabbath)
• I’ll be posting videos taken on my iPhone with silly filters and effects on them with short captions and few hashtags

My Suspicions About TikTok

Based on the stats I’ve read about TikTok, I think that organic growth is going to be significantly faster.

I want to see how long it takes me to catch up with and surpass my Instagram following.

My only advantage on TikTok? I’m a fairly decent pianist.

Let’s see how things go!

What are Your Thoughts on Instagram vs. TikTok?

Let me know in the comments section.

If you have anything to suggest, or any kind of info you’d like to receive

[ANIMAL_Main]

If you’re consistent enough in both platforms, you can basically transfer some of those IG followers to TikTok and then leverage from there (that will help to earn the first few hundreds and attract new users from TT itself). If you have an engaging fanbase on IG, they might be interested in behind-the-scenes content that would only be provided through TikTok

[Xxpo99]

Nice you made the right choice TIKTOK is the future it have to be taken more into consideration , one question i saw a lot of threads where you explained some methods on Instagram even on that period you wasn’t growing or monetzing or automating any account?

[Alexnvo]

cross traffic from insta to tiktok sucks!

1. Not many on it that are on insta.
2. The 25 year old and up is slowly growing but none really present. Another year might be different.
   Now concentrate just on getting tiktok followers and don’t worry about getting insta over to tiktok.
   I had a 186k account shoutout its tiktok. 5 followers. wow!!!

[Itachi]

cross traffic from insta to tiktok sucks!

1. Not many on it that are on insta.
2. The 25 year old and up is slowly growing but none really present. Another year might be different.
   Now concentrate just on getting tiktok followers and don’t worry about getting insta over to tiktok.
   I had a 186k account shoutout its tiktok. 5 followers. wow!!!

I would agree with that. However it works the other way around. A friend wasn´t able to organically grew on Instagram and got 4k Instagram Followers by converting a 15k TikTok Account.

[N00BBY]

Absolutely spot on mate.

[embraceone]

If you’re consistent enough in both platforms, you can basically transfer some of those IG followers to TikTok and then leverage from there (that will help to earn the first few hundreds and attract new users from TT itself). If you have an engaging fanbase on IG, they might be interested in behind-the-scenes content that would only be provided through TikTok

Tried a story which reached 1000 people or so before I deleted it. Not a single person from Instagram followed on TikTok. Also, I don’t want them to be related in any way tbh, nor do I want to think about it too hard. Perhaps further down the line I can consider a messaging strategy to migrate.

Nice you made the right choice TIKTOK is the future it have to be taken more into consideration , one question i saw a lot of threads where you explained some methods on Instagram even on that period you wasn’t growing or monetzing or automating any account?

Yes which is why I’d like to test if ‘organic growth’ is possible, without any kind of engagement. What I’m really testing here is the value of content and hashtags alone.

cross traffic from insta to tiktok sucks!

1. Not many on it that are on insta.
2. The 25 year old and up is slowly growing but none really present. Another year might be different.
   Now concentrate just on getting tiktok followers and don’t worry about getting insta over to tiktok.
   I had a 186k account shoutout its tiktok. 5 followers. wow!!!

Couldn’t agree with you more.

[embraceone]

A brief update. I’ve posted once on Instagram since creating this. No boosted engagement or anything. The post has done extremely poorly. I have been consistently losing followers still. I would coin this ‘organic loss’ at this point.

On TikTok, not much happening either. I’m increasing to two posts per day and let’s see how that goes. Have been experimenting with different hashtag numbers on TikTok. so far my best performing posts only had 3 or 4 highly specific tags. All short captions.

[Race44]

What quality of followers are you getting on TikTok? I’m highly suspicious of the organic followers new users are gaining so easily on the platform. Also suspicious since it’s Chinese owned and they’ve been known to do anything to make things work (I’m part Chinese so that’s not racist).

[Xxpo99]

to be fair bro i’v seen many accounts gets real engagement and hve been boosted without anything suspicious just posting quality content know some growth hack stuff like the lipsynch now what are the hashtags that will help you rank and also it’s the bes time to start on it with all this instagram block and reach prolems better to diversify traffic source especially when it’s coming for free

[customlogovideos]

Errr didn’t Facebook just have to a pay millions for falsifying their video views counts on their platform?

Actually don’t MOST social platforms in America have shady practices that get revealed Later on?..

[Race44]

Fck yeah they did and Chinese businesses are even more shady than US businesses.

Shoutout to Binance though, I’ve always had great experiences with them.

Can anybody verify the rumor that TikTok was deleting NBA related videos?

[EmpireNetwork]

Weird. I’ve been playing with it too and have had interesting results the past two weeks. First video has 2k views as of now, second is at 70k+ (and keeps going up). Had a few do pretty well (3k-11k) since, but the last three (which I felt confident would do really well) completely bombed (with 1.8k, 400, and 200 respectively), which makes me feel like TT may favour new creators to get them hooked and then that stops at some point.

Still growing every day though, sitting at 1.6k followers after about 2 weeks.

[mithrandir]

Definitely agree with you. I live in China and work with Chinese influencers who only use Chinese platforms. If you think there are fake accounts and bots on Instagram, well Chinese platforms take the whole botting thing to a new level. Make no mistake, Tiktok is not exception. And while Facebook and other Western platforms have to (sooner or later) give an account about their shady practices, Chinese social medias don’t have the same standards.

[TheMagician]

by converting a 15k TikTok Account.

What do you mean by converting? Telling followers on tiktok to follow on insta?
Thanks

[Itachi]

What do you mean by converting? Telling followers on tiktok to follow on insta?
Thanks

Yeah, exactly. Alos just linking your IG on TikTok can help a lot.

[micprince]

Also getting the same results right now.

Are you reposting content as well?

[EmpireNetwork]

Are you reposting content as well?

Nope, it’s a personal account

[embraceone]

What quality of followers are you getting on TikTok? I’m highly suspicious of the organic followers new users are gaining so easily on the platform. Also suspicious since it’s Chinese owned and they’ve been known to do anything to make things work (I’m part Chinese so that’s not racist).

They’re scarce. I’ve only gained 7 followers thus far and just over 20 likes because I’m uploading very niche content and the algorithm seems to be VERY location specific. Interested to see where it goes.

to be fair bro i’v seen many accounts gets real engagement and hve been boosted without anything suspicious

Yes but those are all adhering to the standard TikTok formula which is very generic.

I am more interested in whether a niche can survive in the environment completely organically. So far seems alright.

Errr didn’t Facebook just have to a pay millions for falsifying their video views counts on their platform?

Actually don’t MOST social platforms in America have shady practices that get revealed Later on?..

Lest we forget!

Shoutout to Binance though, I’ve always had great experiences with them.

Oh the cryptocurrency days. Such fond memories of my portfolio which is at 0.6% of its original value. Altcoin galore.

Weird. I’ve been playing with it too and have had interesting results the past two weeks.

Link us to the account? I’m interested to see the type of content you’re posting!

[embraceone]

A quick observation.

If you’re niching on TikTok, be weary of using the same hashtags in consecutive posts. Seems to affect reach. Also there seems to be a somewhat randomness to which posts do well and which posts don’t. The app seems to prioritize location-based suggestions over hashtag-based suggestions. Almost every post in my feed is local.