YouTube is For Presenting, Instagram is for Socializing – Conceptual Opinion Piece

The more I learn about and use each platform we have online as a digital content creator, the more I’m able to see them as what they are. For example, I’ve decided as of late – based off my own experience, that YouTube is for presenting, Instagram is for socializing.

Let’s dive in.

When you’re creating and sharing on Instagram, what you’re essentially doing is collaborating and chatting with friends online. We can see in the apps’ focus, with new feature releases such as the collaborator option.

You can even put up posts and stories now where your friends can make their own additions to it. We have polls and quizzes and everything in between.

Instagram is an app that presents itself well as a social setting for like-minded friends to come together in a safe place of self-expression and conversation. If you want it to be like a café, it is.

If you want it to be like the gym or the office – it is. It’s pretty awesome in that way, but it also has its drawbacks.

It’s like that high maintenance girlfriend or boyfriend. You have to participate, and you have to play the game. This means going to other people’s accounts and interacting with their content on a consistent basis.

If success on the app means likes and followers, then this is essential, especially for a small, local business.

It inevitably means probably spending more time on the app than you’d like to. It always pays to have an avatar do this for you on your behalf.

Now YouTube, that’s an entirely different beast. YouTube is for presenting. You create things and put them on the platform, and that’s it. The game is to research the best niches to create within, share them online being mindful about your video name, description and thumbnail, and then reply to comments if they come in.

It’s an app that, I feel, is underutilized by small businesses – and as, quite frankly, apps like Instagram get weirder and weirder, it may be the last frontier on the internet.

It just is what it is. Make a video, upload it, make it sharable, gain traction and repeat.

To be successful on either platform, create a lot, share a lot – watch the data roll in and repeat what’s working. Throw out what isn’t. Youtube is for presenting, social media is for socializing.

So, these are just some of the strategies that Ashcroft Media Co. uses with our clients. We pay close attention to what’s changing and evolving in the industry, and we take what we know and apply it to small businesses marketing strategies.

If this sounds exciting to you, then let’s chat.

To Your Success,

Jay Ashcroft

Ashcroft Media Co.