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Videos performing well on tik tok but struggling on Instagram
Posted by on January 6, 2026 at 10:48 amWanted to see if anyone has any insight on this. I’m a musician and consistently pull thousands-hundreds of thousands of views on tik tok which convert to incredible streams/monthly listeners on Spotify (over 5 million streams across songs) however, I can’t seem to crack the code on Instagram
The same video that went viral on tik tok getting hundreds of thousands of views, will struggle to even hit just a few thousand views on Instagram. Getting 1k likes on Tik Tok is normal, but 100 likes on Instagram is almost worth celebrating for me
I optimise my video for each platform, making slight tweaks within each platform’s editing program and I always post at my most optimal times. For some reason, the videos just flop on Insta
The videos range from high budget/quality all the way to low budget videos filmed by myself on my phone. All do well on tik Tok, none do well on Instagram
One thing that is on my mind is I wonder if I’ve basically told the Instagram algorithm that my account is a low value profile because my team (videographers etc) insist I add them as collaborators to each post that they helped with. I’ve heard mixed reviews on collab posts, but this is with profiles with similar followings to me, but their content typically gets less engagement than me. Could that have ruined my relationship with the Instagram algorithm? It’s not just reels, it’s also pictures. No matter what, they just do bad despite doing amazing on tik tok
I’ve been playing around with trial reels too. I’ve had very mixed results
Sorry this turned into a bit of a rant, if anyone has any insight on this or advice, I’d love to hear it
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1 Reply
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Yeah, I get what you’re going through. TikTok and Instagram are just completely different beasts. TikTok’s algorithm pushes content purely based on watch time and engagement, while Instagram cares a lot about your overall profile activity, past engagement, and how people interact with your account. Collabs probably didn’t ‘ruin’ your account, but if most posts get lower engagement, Instagram might just be showing your content to fewer people. Honestly, a lot of creators see that success on TikTok doesn’t always translate to Insta. The best approach is to keep experimenting with Reels, posting consistently, and engaging with your audience there to slowly train the algorithm.
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Instagram’s algorithm is just weird compared to tiktok. Even viral tiktok content can flop on insta because their engagement signals and audience behavior are totally different.
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Instagram’s algorithm is just weird compared to tiktok. Even viral tiktok content can flop on insta because their engagement signals and audience behavior are totally different.
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Instagram’s algorithm is just weird compared to tiktok. Even viral tiktok content can flop on insta because their engagement signals and audience behavior are totally different.
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TikTok pushes content to strangers fast, Instagram leans way more on existing followers and “brand” signals, so the same clip won’t travel the same way.
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