TikTok vs Instagram Reels vs YouTube Shorts for app founders

All three play full-screen vertical video with sound, and all three put posts in front of people who do not follow you, judged on how the first viewers react. That is what makes them worth it for an app with no audience. A video made for one plays on the other two without changes.

TikTok takes videos and photo posts - slideshows with a sound - and both appear in its For You feed. Slideshows and walls of text are native there, which makes it the easiest of the three to start on without footage.

Instagram takes reels, which are video, and carousels, which can mix photos and videos - so a TikTok slideshow goes there as a carousel. Before a scheduler or any other outside tool can post for you, the account has to be a professional one, business or creator, which is free to switch to in the app's settings.

Shorts take video only, square or vertical, up to a few minutes long. They also live on your YouTube channel and in YouTube search, so a Short about a problem people search for can keep being found long after its first days. YouTube's numbers for a Short include views, likes and comments but not shares.

A video - a demo or a wall of text - goes to all three. A slideshow goes to TikTok and to Instagram as a carousel. If you make one kind of post only, make video, because it reaches all three.

For the first few weeks, post every video to all three and every slideshow to both that take them, and write down what each post got on each platform. Do not decide from one post: the same post can take off on one and stall on another for reasons nobody can see. After a few weeks, a pattern usually shows, and you can spend more of your time where your posts keep doing best - without stopping the others, since posting the same video again costs you almost nothing.

Each platform's own app or website can post and schedule for itself, free. Schedulers post one file to many platforms at once. Topped makes the posts as well as publishing them: you approve a draft once and it goes to your own TikTok, Instagram and YouTube accounts - videos to all three, slideshows to TikTok and Instagram - and the Scoreboard shows what each post got, with each account's results in the post's details. There is a free plan with no card.