🎥 Why Google will Beat Meta After the TikTok Ban

The threat of a national TikTok ban is growing by the day.

Regardless of your stance on the matter, if TikTok does go away there are two primary options for the new home of short form vertical videos:

• Reels on Instagram/Facebook

• YouTube Shorts

If you had to focus on just one platform, I think it should be YouTube. Here’s why:

1. The Samples ➡️ Cone Model 🍦

If you walk into an ice cream shop, it is natural that you’ll sample at least 2 flavors. How else are you supposed to know what you’ll like?

Think of your YouTube shorts as your audience’s sample flavors before the cone.

You can publish 4, 5, 6 shorts in a week, see what the algorithm responds to, and then make a long-form Youtube video about the best performing video topic.

Codie Sanchez does this all the time, she chooses what long-form content to make based on the performance of her shorts.

Unlike YouTube, there is no real opportunity for building upon short-form vertical videos on Instagram. Static images and carousels are performing worse than ever on Instagram, which is ironic considering they were the lifeblood of the app.

Meta & Instagram is focused on expanding the Reels feature to take on TikTok meet the market’s appetite for vertical video.

The more consistent you are with posting reels, the better chance you have for growing your profile.

However, there’s a crucial piece of the internet puzzle that Facebook & Instagram are missing:

2. The Searchability 🔍

YouTube is owned by Google.

Google is the world’s #1 largest search engine andYouTube is the 2nd largest.

By using strategic titles and tags on your YouTube shorts, your content will have a much greater chance of being discoverable via search.

The Instagram search feature is basically useless.

The explore page is populated much like a TikTok For You Page. It takes into account the type of content you typically interact with, but the search feature leaves much to be desired. Locations, topics, and users are all muddled and unclear within Instagram search.

Overall, it's un-intuitive and the experience is not user-friendly.

On the flip side, Google’s top search results are often videos.

Google takes into account not just titles and hashtags on Shorts, but also audio transcripts, meaning they scour every word uttered in every YouTube upload.

If your YouTube video or short answers an obscure query typed into a search bar, Google will direct that searcher straight to it.

3. The Nature of YouTube

Guys…this one is hard to quantify, but there is something that YouTube and TikTok have in common that Instagram lacks at its core:

The viral shitpost.

I’m talking about the absurd, the goofy, the illogical, the irrational, but most importantly, the casual.

YouTube is the OG home video platform. The first YouTube video ever uploaded is about to turn 18 years old, and it is…a shitpost. A home video with no ulterior motives.

This is at the core of YouTube’s roots - its nature is casual and unpretentious, and it has managed to maintain that nature all these years. Sure, there are people who are intensely invested in winning the algorithm, but think about it…

“Charlie Bit my Finger”

“David after Dentist”

“Baby Shark”

Okay, Baby Shark had some higher production value, but all of these videos are…kinda ridiculous. And yet, they are some of the most famous memes in internet lore of all time.

Instagram has had its viral meme moments, sure. But Instagram at its core was built around aesthetics and beautiful photography. The accounts that thrive on Instagram and the influencers who succeed on the platform do so because there is an illusion of perfection.

YouTube and TikTok share the “unpretentious” gene, which in my humble opinion is underrated but invaluable.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Instagram as much as the next basic bitch, but when it comes to finding a replacement for TikTok in your personal video marketing strategy, I would go all in on YouTube.

Have an ELITE Week,

Hannah

If you want to find out how to make shortform vertical videos and become a fully capable video marketer, enroll in Inhouse Videographer. In just 4 hours hours of self-paced lessons, you will learn everything from the optimal lighting for your videos to how to coach your subjects on camera.

Elite Video of the Week:

Maisie Kane has built an audience of over 200,000 on TikTok by sharing the process behind her digital collage artwork. Hannah interviewed her about her content strategy and journey as an artist.

Watch the full interview here.