Week 3 Recap: Insta Vs TikTok
I’m honestly surprised I managed to show up for my 100-day project this week. But now I’m officially 15% of the way there! I'm so glad you’ve joined me. 🎉
This week felt like the longest week on the planet while I struggled with my mental health and tried to “just keep swimming.” But the project has been an anchor and I’m grateful for the ways it kept me grounded!
I did some major social media experiments this week, and I thought I’d share my results! First, a recap of what I carved this week:
Day 11: Stinkbug
Day 12: Tufted Titmouse
(^ This is my favorite video I’ve made so far, with several real-time clips that show the carving and print from start to finish. Also, SO CUTE.)
Day 13: Lupine
Day 14: Yellow Jacket
Day 15: Labrador Tea Plant
Now, let's talk about what I learned about social media this week:
1. New to TikTok > New to Insta
Throughout Week 3, I posted my videos on both platforms, and I found that even though I am brand new to TikTok and well-established on Instagram, a new video posted to either platform had a similar reach. So even though I have 4k followers on Instagram and 25 (just 25 total!) on TikTok, the videos are reaching between 1-2k people on either platform, nearly every time.
2. Insta in the Morning, TikTok at Night
So far the best times to post on Instagram have been early in the morning on the weekdays. The reel I scheduled for around 5 am had the farthest reach this week, and that seems to be a trend.
But! I quickly learned that morning is a terrible time to post on TikTok. The one post I made there in the morning had only 12 total hits! So I’ve found that posting weekdays around 8 or 9 pm on TikTok seems to be the sweet spot - at least for this project so far.
3. Instagram Live: Kinda Worth It
Cons of going “Live”:
A bit scary!
Not well-attended (to be fair, I didn’t announce it and it was around noon on a Friday)
Much lower reach (57 for the live, 1623 for a reel the day before)
Pros of going “Live”:
Confidence - I was surprised to find I could be low-key “entertaining” while still carving my block for the day.
Good practice for a future tutorial (hint hint)
I tried it! Now I know.
Bonus insight: I didn’t post daily on TikTok, so I posted 2-3 videos several evenings to “catch up.” And something interesting happened! The videos I posted all at once had the same reach on TikTok as when I posted one at a time, which means multiple videos posted at once didn’t interfere with each other’s reach. I’ve noticed that’s not the case on Instagram, so that was encouraging!
The Tufted Titmouse was my favorite video so far in this project (above left) and the start-to-finish Live carving was the scariest (above right)
Week 3 on Social:
Here’s the stats for the last 30 days, with the difference from last week in parenthesis:
Instagram
Accts Reached: 24.9k (+6k)
Followers: 4051 (+11)
Accts Engaged: 737 (+204)
TikTok
Accts Reached: 6k (+1.3k)
Followers: 25 (+11)
Accts Engaged: 241 (+92)
So everything’s growing - not in leaps and bounds but small growth is growth!!!
Insta Weekly Growth
Thanks for reading!
Yours in creative community,
Sarah K
TL;DR
Week 3 Highlights:
This weeks blocks were: a Stinkbug, a Tufted Titmouse, Lupine, a Yellow Jacket and a Labrador Tea Plant
Being new to TikTok hasn’t stopped my videos from reaching nearly as many people as my established Instagram account
Videos on Instagram have reached farther when posted in the morning. TikTok videos have reached farther when posted at night.
Instagram Lives are scary but I’m glad I tried it 🫣
