Youtube vs Instagram vs Blog for Creative Entrepreneurs in 2024
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The queen of creative entrepreneurs is now on YouTube! (Yep - Jenna’s arrived!!)
This begs the question: should you start on Youtube too if you want your business to be successful this year?
I was curious, why exactly did Jenna Kutcher decide to get on YouTube after hosting one of the most successful podcasts since 2016?
She also has one million followers on Instagram, so you could argue she doesn't need to be on YouTube. But suddenly she is.
Which raises the question: does she know something that you don't?
Is long-form video on YouTube necessary to avoid getting left behind in business?
Maybe you also wish you had been on Instagram in 2015 when real growth was still possible.
So the question is, is YouTube the next big opportunity for growth for creative entrepreneurs?
While YouTube has been around since 2005, there are actually very few creative entrepreneurs on it. I could give you the names of hundreds of creative entrepreneurs who are active on Instagram, but maybe only like 10 who are consistently posting on YouTube.
So let's start by hearing from Jenna directly to see exactly what's up with her new decision. In her 2024 strategy video, she said this:
"We're also exploring YouTube, so if you like to watch the podcast, you can now go watch it on YouTube. We're experimenting with these different areas. So one of the things that we're really committed to next year, which isn't super shiny, isn't super exciting, is that we're focusing on the things that people are not going to see, but you will feel and experience. So things like search engine optimization, exploring what YouTube could look like for the brand, getting new branding done across the board, continuing to work with our measurement team. So we are really just kind of looking at like, how do we make everything like 1% better?"
Intrigued? See the rest of Jenna’s video here…
So, okay, she's trying YouTube, but why is she adding something new for someone who is very anti-complicated business?
She also noted in her blog post on the top five marketing predictions for 2024, a trend in the rise of long-form content consumption. She said,
"With the shifts in the economy, more entrepreneurs will be relying on long-form content to learn skills and strategies. Podcasting, blogging, and YouTube will be the main platforms for this type of content. By focusing on long-form content, you can provide comprehensive answers and build a library of valuable resources for your audience."
But I think the bigger question is for you. If you're not doing any of these platforms right now, or maybe you're doing a few, but aren't sure if you've made the right choice with the platform you have chosen, then which platform should you choose?
I asked on my YouTube community feed, which platforms you're considering for the new year. 43% of you said YouTube, 28% of you said blog, and 22% said Instagram.
But which is the right choice? If there's one thing you can learn from Jenna's success, it's that she's actually pretty deliberate and slow in her business.
She started blogging in 2011, and blogging was her only long-form content platform until 2016.
She spent basically five years just doing one long-form platform.
She also worked on her Instagram with a thousand followers in 2014 to one million followers 10 years later.
And in 2016, she added podcasting.
So from 2016 to 2023, she basically just did blog, Instagram & podcast.
So she spends literally years building up one new content platform before she adds another. And that's one of the keys to her success: consistency and staying in her lane on that platform that she's chosen until she's mastered it.
So let's compare the three platforms which you say you're most considering in the new year: YouTube, versus blog, versus Instagram.
Okay, and we're gonna compare these on the following criteria:
Competition on the platform
Searchability on the platform
Ability to get found (like Google-wise)
Discoverability - you can imagine this as viral-ability, like how the platform promotes you
Relationship building with your audience
The ease (or not ease!) of creating the content
Analytics, how much data you can get to figure out what to do better in the future
And actual growth potential.
And then in terms of our scoring system, I'm gonna rank all of these out of 10.
Competition on the platform
Competition on YouTube, I've spoken about this before, but really in the creative entrepreneurial space, there very few people on it! I think the fact that Vanessa Lau did blow up on YouTube a couple of years ago shows that there is a huge demand, but not a lot of supply happening on YouTube for creative entrepreneurs.
So I'm gonna give Youtube a 10 for competition on the platform
Competition on Instagram, it's very saturated in the creative entrepreneurial space these days on the ‘gram. Basically every single creative entrepreneur is on Instagram, which you could argue is good because you know your audience is there, but also the downside is you're competing against more people in that location.
So I'm gonna give Instagram a 4 for competition on the platform.
Competition for Blogging Blogging is easy to get into (We'll talk about difficulty of creating in a second) but because it's so easy, it also is fairly common for people to have a blog. Oftentimes people will have something like a podcast as well and then they'll do the show notes on the blog. So in terms of availability of blogs in the creative entrepreneurial space there are a lot of people doing it. So competition, I would say is pretty high for this one.
So I’m going to give blogging a 4 for competition on the platform.
Search Potential
Search Potential on Youtube & Blogs
Now, search potential. This is interesting and this is actually the reason that I went from just blogging to also adding YouTube.
So what I was noticing?
I teach people how to be website designers and so I would create a lot of tutorials on stuff like Squarespace. And that's when I realized that when I would search certain things related to Squarespace, there was a lot of YouTube videos appearing as well as classic blogposts.
And I realized depending on the industry, it is more convenient to watch a video on something than to read a blog post on something.
So YouTube videos are more and more often coming up in the search results. And so I don't think it's as good as a blog. I still think blog being all text-based is better.
So I'm gonna give blog a 10 for search potential and I'll give YouTube a seven.
Search Potential on Instagram
Now in terms of Instagram, I pretty much have never seen an Instagram post/ reel /anything come up when you Google and are trying to find some sort of how-to or educational resource, even though you might've posted something amazing on Instagram like how to photograph the perfect senior session, chances it's gonna come up in the Google search results is pretty much done.
So Instagram’s gonna get a zero for search
Discoverability
Next, let's talk discoverability. So this is basically the potential of the platform itself just showing your content. This is something different than search.
Searches, I go into the search results, I type something and then your content appears. Whereas discoverability is more that the platform promotes you.
TikTok is amazing for this.
It’s literally just the algorithm is just showing popular viral content. And so your potential to go viral, is bigger with any platform that has better discoverability.
Discoverability of blogs
When it comes to Instagram, Instagram does this, not as well as TikTok, but better than for sure a blog. A blog, one of the chances that, I mean, it's just, I just don't think it's gonna happen.
So I'm actually gonna give blog a zero on discoverability.
Discoverability on Instagram
On Instagram, this is the difficulty with Instagram, which I think is a lot of the reason why a lot of creative entrepreneurs are getting tired of it, is it feels really difficult to be found on Instagram. Reels definitely give you a potential for doing this and Reels is really your best discoverability option on Instagram these days.
But again, something like TikTok is better. It feels very difficult for a lot of people to get found on there.
So I'll give Instagram a seven for discoverability.
Discoverability on Youtube
And then on YouTube, this is actually the thing that surprised me the most when it came to getting on the platform. And something which I had to totally change in my brain from having written on a blog and just being a blogger before to doing blog and YouTube.
And that was the fact that 70% of views on YouTube come from something like you just see when you're scrolling through the home feed or the suggested videos or the up next videos on the right hand side of the page.
And only 30% of views on YouTube are actually coming from you searching something in the search bar and then content appearing that way.
So actually your best way to grow on YouTube isn't necessarily to create search-based content. That's an option. You can create that content, but you're probably actually better off to try to go for discoverability. And that's making your videos a little bit sexy, giving it a really like kind of intriguing title and thumbnail in order to get found. So for discoverability on YouTube, actually better than you might imagine.
So I'm also gonna give Youtube a seven for discoverability and put it equal with Instagram.
Relationship building
Next, relationship building. So this is your ability to be a real human to your audience. If you wanna be a personal brand, then having some personality in there is helpful.
Having a relationship, sharing things that are not just how-to tutorial content again and again and again is beneficial.
Relationship building on a blog
In terms of the platforms that are best for doing that, blog, let's be real is probably the worst.
It is possible you can add a little bit of your life and personality into there, but it's in written format. It doesn't feel as real and so you're less in people's lives, let's say.
Relationship building on Instagram & Youtube
Whereas I would say for YouTube and Instagram, I do think it's a lot more possible because it's just video content. It automatically gives you a better opportunity to connect with your audience. So I would say that probably those two are kind of even for me.
The thing which actually might even give Instagram the edge is the fact that you can bring people with you in your every everyday life and it's very like quick short clips in stories, for example, or reels and that's good.
Whereas with YouTube, it's actually a bit harder to produce content. So you're probably sharing less of your life than you would on Instagram.
So I would say probably our best relationship builder is probably Instagram followed closely by YouTube.
And they're both doing obviously significantly better than a blog because of the fact that it's video content. I feel like if you were considering podcasts, podcasts would be somewhere in between written content and video content basically because you're just doing audio.
Content Creation
Okay, next up is creation.
Content creation on Youtube
So when it comes to creating YouTube videos, I've mentioned this a few times - it is complicated.
It took me a long time to figure out lighting and audio and having a space that was good for making YouTube videos. And so that is difficult. Also the fact that if you're like me, you also want to not look like you do on an everyday day of work, so it takes time to get pretty too!
So creation on YouTube is very challenging. Theres’ a lot that goes into it.
Content creation on Instagram
Instagram, I would argue again, it's more like little snippets here and there. So probably a bit easier to produce. Still not the easiest, not as easy as a blog.
Content Creation for the blog
A blog, all I had to do when I was blogging was crack open my laptop, it didn't matter what time of day it was or anything. I could just crack open the laptop, start typing, produce something in like an hour or two.
Creating a YouTube video can take me half a day to a day these days. Instagrams, I know if you're creating reels people always say that it takes way longer than you would expect to, to create a 30 second reel. It could take them like an hour.
And then also equipment. A
Blog, you basically just need a laptop and an idea.
Instagram, idea, phone, maybe a light.
YouTube, camera, a few lights, bigger space as well, I would say. If you want to really do it well.
So let's put creation, YouTube's gonna get a zero.
Okay, so for creation we have YouTube zero, Instagram five, and blog a 10.
Analytics
Next, let's move on to analytics. Might not sound the sexiest thing in the world, but to be honest, it was only once I got onto YouTube that I realized the insanity that is YouTube analytics and just how powerful that is.
Youtube analytics
Let me give you an example so I can, this will make sense to you. So I was watching back one of my videos and in a YouTube video, you can watch in the back end the retention on a video. So it's the percentage of people who drop off in your video.
The interesting thing about it was that you can see when there's like a spike of interest in something in a YouTube video.
And so I went back and I noticed the spike of interest?
What exactly was I talking about at that point?
I was talking about batch working in that video when I had a little spike of interest. So that let me know, okay, my people are very interested to learn more about batch working. I should create more content on that.
Blog analytics
When I had a blog, I could see what the most popular blog posts were, but I couldn't get very specific into the analytics. And so blogs I’d say they’re okay for analytics, you know what the most popular pages are on your blog, but beyond that, not much.
YouTube, it will blow your mind once you get into the analytics. The extent of them is bananas!
Instagram analytics
Instagram, okay, not great.
Growth
Okay, next let's talk about growth. So there was a very interesting YouTube video which I just watched. I will link it above for you. It was from a lovely lady named Modern Millie and she was talking about the top 50 creators on Forbes top creator list and where they had grown their platforms and their audience and their following and where they were most active now.
And the most interesting thing that I noticed in that video was that she said that all of the people who were on Instagram and that was their main content platform, they didn't grow on Instagram. They actually grew on other platforms and then sort of like brought that audience over to Instagram, but that wasn't the place they grew in the first place.
Growth on Instagram
And so from that, that gives me the feeling that growing on Instagram, and again, if you're on Instagram, you're probably feeling this, growing feels very difficult on there. So that's not fabulous.
I'm gonna give Instagram a two for growth.
Growth with a blog
Now in terms of blog, growing on a blog, having done it for literally years, you will get like organic slow growth. As you write things that Google wants to put in their search results, you will slowly but surely build your traffic. And it is a pretty steady slow growth on a blog.
Growth on youtube
On YouTube, however, there are a lot more, again, discoverability options, and therefore also more, let's say viral growth. It's not viral like TikTok is or anything, but it's definitely better than the other two, I would say. This blog is gonna get a five for me here and YouTube will get an eight for me in terms of growth.
The round up!
Okay, math time, give me a second 😉 Okay, final results are in.
YouTube came in with 51 points
Instagram with 31 points
Blog with 32 points.
And it looks like the Sharpie has officially called it quits!
To be honest, rankings aside though, another factor should be how much that platform really aligns with you and your strengths.
Some of us are better suited to speaking in front of a lot of people on video or in person and others of us just are not.
I had so many of my web designer students ask me what marketing strategy they should choose to get clients. And I actually ended up creating a quiz so they could get the answer quickly that way. You can take the quiz below!
To be honest, the three platforms that we've discussed here are just actually the tip of the iceberg in terms of marketing options.
And it could be that actually none of these that we've discussed are right for you, but maybe one of the ones in the quiz is the right option for you - defs go ahead & take it to see!
Now, no matter which platform you choose, if you're smart like Jenna, you're not just going to create content, you're gonna create content that leads to your email list.
Jenna always says that her email list is where she actually drives profits and results in her business. And I personally have to agree. It's the same for my business. So watch this video next to steal my list building strategy for getting 48,000 email subscribers 👇