TUNE IN ON YOUR FAVORITE APP

 

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should focus your marketing efforts on LinkedIn or Instagram, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common questions I hear from service providers. The problem is that too many business owners choose a platform based on what they enjoy, what another marketer recommends, or what their competitors are doing. 

 

In this episode, I’m breaking down why none of those are the right answer. Instead, we’ll talk about how to use data, strategy, and a simple 90-day experiment to determine where your audience is actually spending time and which platform is most likely to support your business goals.

 

In This Episode, I Chat About:

• Why your favorite platform isn’t always your most profitable platform
• The difference between vanity metrics and the metrics that actually matter
• How to run a simple 90-day experiment across LinkedIn and Instagram
• Why strategy should guide your platform decisions, not assumptions
• How storytelling and systems help you stay visible without burning out

 

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One of the questions I hear most often from service providers is whether they should be focusing on LinkedIn or Instagram. It’s a fair question because there are more platforms available today than ever before. Between LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and whatever new platform seems to appear every few months, it can feel like marketing has become a full-time job all by itself. Everywhere you turn, someone is telling you that you need to create more content, post more frequently, show up on more platforms, and somehow still have enough time left over to actually serve your clients.

The problem is that most service providers don’t have unlimited time for marketing. You’re delivering client work, managing projects, handling sales conversations, taking care of administrative tasks, and trying to maintain a life outside of your business. Marketing matters, but it isn’t the only thing that matters. That’s why the decision about where to spend your marketing time is so important. Every hour you invest in creating content is an hour that could have been spent elsewhere, which means you want to make sure you’re investing that time where it has the greatest impact.

What makes this conversation even more complicated is that there are so many opinions about what you should be doing. One marketer says LinkedIn is the best place for service providers. Another says Instagram is where relationships are built. Someone else insists you need TikTok. Then there are the people telling you to be everywhere at once. When you’re constantly hearing conflicting advice, it’s easy to start looking for a simple answer. You want someone to tell you which platform is the right one so you can stop wondering and start focusing.

Unfortunately, that’s not how marketing works. The answer isn’t LinkedIn. The answer isn’t Instagram. The answer is wherever your audience is spending time and making buying decisions. That’s why the real question isn’t “Which platform is best?” The real question is “How do I determine which platform is best for my business?”

 

Why Your Favorite Platform May Be Leading You in the Wrong Direction

 

One of the biggest mistakes I see service providers make is choosing a platform based on personal preference. We naturally gravitate toward the platforms we enjoy using. If you love watching Instagram Stories, sharing behind-the-scenes moments, and engaging with visual content, it’s easy to convince yourself that Instagram should be your primary marketing platform. If you enjoy professional conversations and thought leadership content, LinkedIn may feel like the obvious choice.

The challenge is that what you enjoy and what generates business opportunities are not always the same thing. In fact, they’re often completely different. I know this from my own experience. Instagram is probably my favorite platform. I enjoy the creativity. I love sharing stories and seeing what other people are doing behind the scenes. If I were making a decision based solely on what I enjoy, Instagram would win every single time.

But most of my clients don’t come from Instagram. They come from LinkedIn.

That realization forced me to separate my personal preferences from my business strategy. While Instagram is the platform I enjoy spending time on, LinkedIn is where professional conversations happen for my audience. It’s where referrals come from. It’s where people reach out about collaborations. It’s where opportunities consistently show up. If I ignored LinkedIn because Instagram was more fun, I would be ignoring one of the strongest lead-generating channels in my business.

This is where many service providers get stuck. They assume that because they enjoy a platform, their audience must enjoy it too. They assume that because they spend time there, their ideal clients must also be there. Sometimes that’s true. Often it isn’t. The reality is that your audience doesn’t make decisions based on what platform you like best. They make decisions based on their own habits, preferences, and buying behaviors. That’s why your marketing strategy has to be built around them rather than around you.

 

Stop Making Marketing Decisions Based on Assumptions

 

One of the reasons platform selection feels so frustrating is because many business owners are trying to make decisions without enough information. They want certainty before they’ve gathered any evidence. They want to know exactly where their audience is before they’ve spent any time testing different options.

Most people don’t know where their audience is hanging out right away. That’s normal. Marketing is a process of testing, observing, and learning. It’s not something you’re supposed to have figured out within a week of starting your business. Sometimes it takes an entire quarter before patterns begin to emerge. Sometimes it takes even longer.

What I see happen instead is that people fill in the gaps with assumptions. They assume Instagram is the right platform because everyone seems to be talking about Instagram. They assume LinkedIn won’t work because they personally find it boring. They assume TikTok is necessary because another business owner mentioned having success there. The problem with assumptions is that they often have very little to do with reality.

Assumptions can also become expensive. When you spend months creating content on a platform that isn’t generating meaningful opportunities, you’re investing time, energy, and resources into an approach that may never produce the results you’re looking for. That’s why I encourage service providers to think like researchers rather than guessers. Instead of asking yourself what you think will work, start gathering information that helps you understand what is actually working.

The good news is that you don’t need a complicated marketing department to do this. You simply need a process that allows you to collect enough information to make an informed decision.

 

The 90-Day Experiment That Creates Clarity

 

One of the simplest ways to identify the right platform is to stop looking for immediate answers and start running experiments. When clients tell me they aren’t sure whether LinkedIn or Instagram is the better fit, I often recommend a ninety-day testing period. The goal isn’t to prove that one platform is universally better than the other. The goal is to understand which platform performs better for their specific audience.

The key to making this experiment work is simplicity. Too many people turn testing into something far more complicated than it needs to be. They create completely different content for each platform, change multiple variables at once, and then wonder why they can’t identify what’s driving results. If you want meaningful data, you need consistency.

Instead of creating different messages for different platforms, start with one core piece of content. Take the same idea and adapt it for LinkedIn and Instagram. The message remains the same, but the format changes to fit the platform. Then repeat that process consistently over a ninety-day period. This allows you to compare results without introducing unnecessary variables.

What you’re looking for isn’t perfection. You’re looking for patterns. Where are conversations happening? Which platform generates meaningful engagement? Where are people reaching out to learn more? Which platform is creating opportunities that move your business forward? Once you begin asking those questions, the conversation shifts away from personal opinions and toward measurable outcomes.