Facebook or Instagram: where are your customers, really?

"Should we be on Instagram?"

Usually the person asking already suspects the answer is yes, because someone told them Facebook is for older people and Instagram is where things are happening. Sometimes they're right. Often they're not — and the cost of being wrong is a year of posting into a room where none of your customers are standing.

Here's how we actually decide.

Ask who buys from you, not who's online

Every platform has users in your area. That's not the question. The question is whether the people who make buying decisions in your category are using it to make those decisions.

If your customer is a 52-year-old homeowner deciding who to call about a failing furnace, she is almost certainly on Facebook. She is in three local buy-sell-trade groups, she asks for recommendations in a neighborhood group, and she checks whether your page looks like an actual business before she calls.

If your customer is a 28-year-old planning a wedding, choosing a salon, or picking where to eat on a Friday, Instagram is doing far more work in that decision.

Same town. Completely different platform strategy.

Facebook is still the local platform in our area

We'll say this plainly, because it's unpopular advice in marketing circles: in Quincy, Adams County, and most of west-central Illinois, Facebook is still where local commerce happens.

It's where community groups live. It's where events get shared. It's where someone posts "who does good concrete work?" and gets forty replies. For service businesses, ag businesses, contractors, and local retail, that's not a nostalgic preference — it's where the conversation is.

Instagram in our market skews younger and more visual. It's excellent for businesses whose product photographs well and whose customers are under 40. It's much weaker at the "ask the group for a recommendation" behavior that drives a lot of local service work.

Look at your own numbers before you look at anyone else's

You probably already have the answer sitting in an account you rarely open.

Your Facebook page insights show the age, gender, and location of the people already following you. Your website analytics show which social platform actually sends visitors. Your intake process — if you ask "how did you hear about us?" — is the most honest data you'll ever get.

We start every social engagement by reading those three things. Not by opening a content calendar.

The both-platforms trap

"Let's just do both" sounds safe. In practice, for a business with limited time, it means two half-managed accounts posting the same content in the wrong format, and neither one performing.

Instagram is not a place to cross-post Facebook content. Vertical video, visual-first storytelling, and a very different caption style — treat it like Facebook and it reads like a business that showed up because it felt obligated to.

Better to be genuinely good in one place than present in two.

When the answer really is both

Some businesses should be on both, and we say so:

• You sell to two distinct age groups (a family restaurant, a fitness studio, a boutique)
• Your work is highly visual and you already generate photos or video as part of the job
• You're running Meta ads, where both placements come from the same campaign anyway

That last one matters. Meta ad campaigns can serve Instagram placements even if organic Instagram isn't a priority. Running ads on Instagram and maintaining a full Instagram content program are two different commitments.

What about TikTok, LinkedIn, everything else?

TikTok can work locally, particularly for restaurants, retail, and anything with personality behind it. It also demands a volume and a tone that most owner-operated businesses can't sustain. We'd rather see you post twice a week on Facebook for two years than four times a week on TikTok for six weeks.

LinkedIn matters if you sell to other businesses. For most of the companies we work with, it doesn't.

How we'd approach it for you

We look at who your customers actually are, where your existing audience already lives, what content you can realistically produce, and what your competitors are doing well and badly. Then we pick — usually one platform to do properly, sometimes two.

And we revisit it. A business that was right to be Facebook-only in 2023 might not be in 2027.

The point

The right platform isn't the newest one, and it isn't the one your nephew recommended. It's the one where the people who write you checks are already spending their attention.

Tell us who your customers are and we'll tell you honestly where they are.