Facebook and Instagram are run by the same company and share an advertising system, but they behave quite differently for organic content. This lesson is about the free side; paid advertising on both is covered later in this course.
Facebook retains strengths that are easy to overlook: Groups, Events, Marketplace, and a genuinely local reach that suits businesses serving a specific area. Its audience skews older than Instagram's in many markets, which is an advantage or a disadvantage depending entirely on who you serve.
Instagram is visual first. It suits work that can be shown — food, design, physical products, before-and-after results, spaces, craft. A business whose value is hard to photograph will find it a harder fit, and that is worth admitting early rather than fighting.
Links get less reach
Both platforms reduce distribution for posts that send people away — external links in particular. This does not mean never linking; it means a link-only post is usually the weakest thing you can publish. Common workarounds are putting the link in the profile or the first comment, and making the post itself worth reading on its own so the link is a bonus rather than the whole point.
| Type | Why it works |
|---|---|
| Behind the scenes | Shows the people and process; builds familiarity |
| Before and after | Immediately understandable proof of what you do |
| Answering a common question | Useful on its own, and others had the same question |
| Customer results | Evidence, with permission |
| Short how-to video | High save rate; people keep it for later |
| Local content | Community relevance, which Facebook in particular favours |
Hashtag advice ages badly and their importance has been repeatedly overstated and revised. The stable version: a small number of genuinely relevant hashtags is reasonable, thirty barely-related ones look like spam, and no quantity of hashtags rescues content nobody wants to engage with. They are a minor discovery aid, not a growth strategy.