Instagram or LinkedIn: where to talk to your customers

First: who is your customer?

If your customers are private individuals, who choose with their eyes and often in the evening: a restaurant, a salon, a home tradesperson, a shop, a therapist. They are on Instagram.

If your customers are businesses, and the decision is made at the office, by people with a title and a budget: a firm, an engineering office, a supplier, a service provider. They are on LinkedIn.

Many businesses are in between. In that case, look at where your last three good customers came from. They found you somewhere.

Instagram: show

Instagram is a network of images. You show the work, the places, behind the scenes, the result. Copy matters less than the photo, and the photo matters less than consistency. What works for a business:

• work in progress, before it is presentable;
• the finished result, with happy people in front of it;
• behind the scenes: the workshop, the van, the morning;
• stories for the everyday, without editing.

What does not work: communication visuals with the logo writ large, inspirational quotes, and posts that look like adverts.

LinkedIn: explain

LinkedIn is a network of people who work, and who read. You explain what you have learned, what you have delivered, what you think of a problem in the trade. Copy matters, the photo accompanies it. What works:

• a project told: the problem, what was done, what it changed;
• an opinion on a question your customers ask themselves;
• what you learned by getting it wrong;
• the people in the company speaking in their own name, more than the company page.

What does not work: reposting press releases, announcing that you are proud, and posts written for the boss rather than for the customer.

Both? Only if you keep up the pace

Keeping up a network takes time every week, not only at launch. Two networks is twice that time, with content that does not copy from one network to the other: the workshop photo that works on Instagram looks thin on LinkedIn without the text that goes with it.

The simple rule: one network kept up is worth more than two abandoned. Start with the one where your customers are, keep it up for three months, and add the second only if the first runs without effort.

The pace that matters

On both networks, consistency beats talent. An account that posts every week for a year gets seen; the same account posting ten times in January and then nothing does not. Plan a realistic calendar, written a month in advance, with topics that come from your business and not from a list of ideas found elsewhere. And keep some posts in reserve for the weeks when there is no time.

Conclusion

Instagram for private individuals who choose with their eyes, LinkedIn for businesses that decide at the office. One network to start, kept up every week, with content that comes from your work. The second will wait until the first is running.