Instagram and TikTok are some of the biggest social media apps and offer business profile access. This allows for users to see basic information regarding the business and allows for users to learn more about the company but also gives easy access to buy the products.
Social media has become a powerhouse in terms of digital marketing. With apps like Instagram and TikTok, engagement and business marketing tools have allowed brands to take off just due to their presence online.
Instagram launched its business tool in 2016, and since then, it has added multiple tools surrounding the business side of social media. When the business tool first launched, it allowed regular users to turn their profiles into business ones. For brands and companies, it allowed them to put store hours, contact information, a website, a direct contact button to get in touch, and all the analytics of the business profiles. The analytics include the demographics of the audience, such as age, gender, and the impressions they got from those specific demographics. In 2020 Instagram added more to the business side of things and put in a store tab in Instagram where companies and brands could directly sell products and tickets directly from the app without leaving. With even more additions, such as stories and interactive stickers to add to stories, Instagram has set a mark on how they have helped businesses get traction online.
TikTok hasn’t been popular as long as social media companies like Snapchat and Instagram, but it does offer the best chance to blow up and exceed numbers in terms of popularity. It has similar tools to Instagram in the sense of business profiles and how users can view certain aspects of your business, like contact information, location, etc. What TikTok offers that Instagram doesn’t its popularity and how many users consume the app. A certain stat says 90% of users spend more than 52 minutes on the app a day. TikTok has the biggest numbers for engagement and can boost a profile that has 0 followers to a million in a week, and it wouldn’t be a surprise. These social media companies like TikTok and Instagram have allowed massive waves of people to cross over these accounts from companies and brands and allow them to explode on social media.
The one con of these social media companies is the pay. Most social media will pay profiles that generate a lot of content and views that also have high engagement, which would lead them to keep on regenerating high numbers in views, likes, and comments. Even though these companies receive lots of exposure and customers through these apps, they are still pumping up numbers for the social media company itself, therefore, letting these social media companies completely profit from their own “success,” which just seems to be exposure. For instance, a famous YouTuber and internet boxer KSI has amassed 9 million followers, 70 million likes, and over 200 million views on his TikTok yet has received a mere $3000 dollars from the app. So even though, TikTok and Instagram offer great business features to allow companies and brands to push their products online easily, it doesn’t repay big companies who offer users to the social media companies. This is also a reason why many influencers don’t use TikTok or Instagram as a way of making money online and instead use youtube.
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