Should You Repurpose Your Instagram Content on LinkedIn?
The other day a client was showing me a testimonial image that she created for Instagram and wondered if she could consider posting it to LinkedIn. Fair question because these platforms are pretty different. Where Instagram is an image platform that does not favor links, LinkedIn is almost the opposite.
But, as they say, opposites attract! For certain industries, these two platforms complement each other nicely. They are both a great platform for building relationships, sharing content, and showcasing your expertise. I most often see entrepreneurs, marketers, and certain types of service providers on both. Exactly how you can use LinkedIn to grow your business is a completely different post, so stay tuned.
So back to the question. If you have a beautiful square Instagram image with a testimonial or educational content should you repurpose it on LinkedIn?
The answer—it depends.
As always with social media, it can be hard to know what will do well. Of course, the more you post, the more you’ll see what your audience likes. But especially in the beginning when you’re just growing, it can be unpredictable. Some images translate well to LinkedIn, whereas some do not.
Part of the reason is the formatting and function of LinkedIn are different. Instagram is an app-based platform, where just 57% of LinkedIn traffic is mobile, which is low for social media platforms. So even just the way you are viewing the content is different. What looks good on mobile doesn’t always translate to desktop, and vice versa.
The purpose of Instagram is to share images, whereas, on LinkedIn, images most definitely help but are not the focus. Posts with images get a 98% higher comment rate. Although it’s not clear if those images are photos, graphs, or text-heavy images.
So really the best thing to do is just try it out. See how your Instagram image does on LinkedIn. However, I would recommend changing the caption to match LinkedIn’s professional vibe. Then pay attention. See how the post does.
Next time try repurposing the content in a different format and see how that goes. In this Lempod article, the author did just that and she got great results simply from repurposing the same content in five different formats. She did it with the exact same content, but you could try it with similar types of content if you aren’t keen on that.
Here are just a few ideas on how to repurpose your Instagram content to LinkedIn:
On Instagram, you have probably seen those text-style carousels, where each image has a fact and typically the first image is a header. On LinkedIn, try putting most of the text in the caption and sharing just the header image.
Repurpose the content into a video format. Video is actually the most shared content on LinkedIn, so you have a good chance of standing out. You could create a video or go Live and simply talk about the content you put in the Instagram image.
Try converting the image into a GIF or an animated video.
On LinkedIn, you can share PDFs, so you could try repurposing the content into a PDF and share it that way.
Another thing I like to suggest is adding a testimonial/text image from Instagram to the featured media section of your LinkedIn profile, like my example below. I don’t love that the top text is slightly cut-off, but I thought it was a different way to showcase my testimonial on LinkedIn. There are no analytics on this section, so it’s hard to know how it’s doing but if it’s something that did well on Instagram, so it can’t hurt to try.
The point is that while the exact Instagram image may not translate as well on LinkedIn, the content itself is absolutely worth repurposing. But it is all about the analytics. Always monitor to see how things are going. That’s how you’ll learn what people want to see from you.
