Experiment: Will trending sounds gain more short-form video views on all platforms? And does the amount of followers on each platform matters?
As a social media manager my Instagram Explore page is filled with tips and tricks from Instagram self-proclaimed guru’s. And one of those tips is using trending audio. While most social media platforms embraced short-form content, I’m wondering what the impact of trending sounds could be on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
For this small experiment, I chose a trending sound on TikTok Creative Center. With 31,5k users on TikTok, you could say that I was a little late to the trend, but I knew the sound was about to go viral so 31k would be peanuts. And I was right because 2 weeks later the audio fragment hit 150k users. The audio fragment was about to hit Instagram (1,3k users), so it was now or never. And at last, the audio had only 134 users on YouTube Shorts before the experiment.
Next up, creating content! My own social media accounts are active in 2 niches, fashion and social media marketing. Two different audiences, so I had to make 2 videos. For my fashion account I recorded myself deciding which pair of boots I should wear. For my business account I showed my Instagram Reels drafts and lip-synched to the song. The lines ‘I’m coming back for you baby’ refer to all drafts I saved but haven't posted yet.
Time to post on all my accounts! I scheduled 2 YouTube Shorts for 6.15 pm and manually posted 1 TikTok (fashion video) and 2 Reels videos.
After 30 minutes I checked the results. My business Shorts immediately took off while I only had 2 subscribers at that time. The other ones didn't gain that much traction.
One hour later I checked the views again. There wasn’t much happening on Instagram, but my Fashion Short gained over 26,8k views in only half an hour. The Short Shelve was doing its thing. I was familiar with YouTube Shorts views spiking in a short amount of time, but I never got that many views on 1 video.
All videos did gain some more views in the first 24h, but nothing spectacular had happened.
Almost 1 week later when I was about to record my final thoughts when I saw another spike in views. My fashion Short had appeared on the Short Shelve for the second time and I ended up gaining almost 5k views in half an hour. This video received a lot more comments because they were responding to my 'this or that' question.
Although gaining subscribers wasn't the goal, I do want to add to this blogpost that I gained 55 new subscribers with a video that took 10 minutes to create.
We’re 2 weeks later and here's my final conclusion:
- Followers don’t matter.
- The least amount of views were coming from Instagram which is the most competitive platform.
- You can’t deny YouTube Shorts anymore.
My TikTok video gained the most views in 24h, so posting multiple times a day isn’t a good strategy.
- Trending audio will not make you go viral on every platform, but I still believe it’s a valuable asset to your content strategy.
Do you want to keep up with all the changes and new features of the Social Media? Go to @creativeassistantsofie on Instagram.
And if you are ready to put out video content for your business, you can find all my services on the website creativesofie.com or let's set up a call by contacting me via info@creativesofie.com.
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