- With 656 million downloads, TikTok was actually
the most downloaded app in 2021 globally
But somehow, at the same time,
YouTube was the top platform in the US
for watching short-form content,
and I'll get into those stats in a second.
Basically, we've all been sitting back, though,
and watching these Goliath social media platforms
fight over short-form content.
Creators have found a really solid home in YouTube
over the last decade, but TikTok has risen fast,
and taken over in the short-form space.
So we wanted to better understand,
if you're thinking about making short-form content,
where should you be doing it?
Let me know in the comments, though,
are you somebody who prefers YouTube Shorts, TikTok,
or do you use both?
To help you make this decision,
let's first talk about how TikTok and YouTube are similar.
The goal of both shorts and TikTok
is to get viewers to endlessly scroll from video to video,
and get them to engage with your content.
When you take YouTube Shorts and compare them
right next to TikTok as a whole,
you get, actually, a lot of similarities.
In fact, in this chart, you'll notice the biggest difference
is that you can actually have vertical videos
up to three minutes long on TikTok.
Otherwise, these platforms are largely the same.
However, each one has some very specific benefits,
and we're gonna start with TikTok.
First is the for you page, which is the result
of an algorithm that knows you so well,
it constantly delivers you videos that you want to watch
and ones you didn't know you wanted to watch.
With its never ending feed that's impossible to put down,
you could rest assured, as a creator,
your videos will be seen by somebody.
As a result of this,
it's a lot easier to go viral on TikTok.
It's certainly not uncommon for small creators
to have just one of their TikToks blow up overnight
and get hundreds of thousands of views.
And the video filters themselves on TikTok are very robust.
You have AR effects, green screen effects, saturation tone,
brightness, color temperature, just so many features.
It's absurd.
There's also really neat Q&A functionality too,
whereby people can ask you questions in your comments
and you can take those and make another TikTok
to respond to them.
And hey, just a quick side note on that.
We actually have an app that helps you find trending sounds
that haven't quite started trending yet.
You can download it on the app store or Google Play,
and you can even use it for YouTube Shorts.
Speaking of YouTube Shorts, let's talk about
the benefits that YouTube offers its short-form creators.
Among US social video viewers,
YouTube is the top platform for watching short-form content.
The number two spot goes to Facebook,
which captures a 60.8% share,
while TikTok takes third place at 53.9%.
So YouTube is still dominant here,
and because people can watch videos
that are much longer than three minutes,
you can actually use your shorts
to grow your other YouTube content.
This is because you can post your YouTube Shorts
in the same exact channel where you're doing live streams
and long-form videos.
As long as the shorts you're making
and the long-form videos that you're making
are really similar to each other,
there's a really good chance that people
who like your shorts will get pushed
to your long-form videos and wanna click on 'em.
In that way, YouTube lets you build
a really robust content ecosystem.
Also, when it comes to YouTube Shorts,
you have a scheduling tool, and it works on desktop.
YouTube also has incredibly in-depth and advanced analytics,
that can teach you so much about improvements
that you could be making video after video.
And also, another cool feature YouTube has,
is unlisting a video.
Which means you can take a video and make it private,
and only people with the link can watch it.
So each site has its pros and cons,
but which one should you be making short-form content for?
Well, let's consider that most people
do use more than one social media app at a time.
It's very likely that TikTok users
do find themselves on YouTube and vice versa.
And if people don't like TikToks and YouTube Shorts,
then they're probably not the audience
you're trying to target anyway.
So something that a lot of creators do
is they make one vertical video,
and they actually upload it to both platforms.
This way you can kind of benefit from both.
TikTok offers its longer videos
and better chances to go viral.
YouTube is gonna give you really robust analytics
and the ability for you to promote longer-form content
on the same page.
So, as always, the winner... (drum roll)
Comes down to you and your goals.
Each creator is gonna approach this in a different way.
TikTok is gonna work better for some,
and YouTube Shorts is gonna work better for others,
depending on the type of content they wanna make.
And if you're looking to choose one or the other,
it's probably because you don't wanna manage
two entire different channels.
So hopefully, by breaking down these differences,
that decision has been made a little bit easier for you.
And once you're looking to actually
start making short-form videos,
this video right here will help you make sure
that they're highly, highly engaging.