Instagram vs. YouTube. What’s your strategy?

What social platform should you use for your influencer marketing campaign? Instagram or YouTube, maybe one of the other platforms?

We know that YouTube is bigger than Instagram, user wise. We also know that 95% of Instagram users watch YouTube videos. However, the fact that there is a match in audience, doesn’t mean you can just copy your Instagram influencer strategy to YouTube and vice versa.

Depending on your brands goals and budget, one platform might be more beneficial than the other. So, what works on which platform?

If you want to create brand awareness, both Instagram and YouTube will work. However, if you are looking for a way to increase direct sales via influencer marketing, Instagram might not be the best choice. Where, as soon as the story disappears, your affiliate link disappears too. On YouTube, on the other hand, your link will be there for years.

Extensive vs. short content

In general, YouTube is preferable if you want to publish extensive content (e.g. product reviews). Instagram is more desirable if you want to share short content, posts have to be quickly digestible as you only have a few seconds before a user switches their attention to the next Instagram story or post.

Additional traffic source

If you’re looking for more traffic to your website, you better choose YouTube. On Instagram it is harder to drive traffic to your website, but mentioning your product on Instagram by an influencer is more likely to look native.

Quality vs. speed

Making a high quality video is usually harder than creating a video for your Instagram story. Producing a ten-minute YouTube video might take hours of footage and even more time for editing. Shooting a short Instagram story on the other hand can be done in minutes.

In essence…

In essence, larger brands will use both platforms in order to reach different goals and multiply the effect of their influencer marketing campaign. However, we do realize that, if you are a small brand you might not have the time and budget to create content for both Instagram and YouTube. In that case, we advise you to start with Instagram. It is easier and quicker to start with Instagram than YouTube.