The two platforms side by side
A hard seltzer brand ran one summer campaign on Instagram and Facebook. Arcus watched every post, sorted each one by what was on screen, and read views and shares from the brand’s own social export. Platforms were never added together. See the content report.
| Posts | 39 | 29 |
| Average views per post | 8,148 | 3,230 |
| Average shares per post | 36 | 1.2 |
| Biggest post by views | Slushie how-to, 32,910 | Slushie how-to, 37,836 |
| Most shared post | A joke about friends, 409 shares | Cans in hot dog buns, 12 shares |
Same brand, same summer, often the same video. On Facebook, 24 of 29 posts got zero or one share.
Why sort by what’s on screen? Because the campaign name tells you what the brief intended, and the screen tells you what the viewer got. Sorted by the screen, the same pattern appeared on both platforms for the tricks, and two very different patterns appeared for everything else.
What Facebook watched
The how-to won. The slushie post, which turned the can into a frozen drink you could make at home, did 37,836 views on Facebook. That’s 11.7 times the Facebook average and the biggest post on either platform. It got zero shares.
Hosting hacks, the group of posts built on a trick with the can, led on Facebook views with a median of 4,509, 1.4 times the average. It led on Instagram too. That’s the one pattern that worked on both platforms. On Facebook, though, the slushie post carried 80% of the group’s views. The other three hosting posts did 6,832, 2,186 and 686 views.
One still image got passed on. Cans tucked into hot dog buns did 11,388 views and 12 shares, the only Facebook post in double digits. It never ran on Instagram.
Put those together and Facebook’s taste is clear in this data. A how-to with a step you can repeat. A product doing something silly in a single frame. Things that are useful or quick to get. The posts that depended on a shared moment, or on knowing who your friends are, didn’t travel there.
What didn’t travel to Facebook
Instagram’s biggest share hits didn’t carry over. A joke about the viewer’s friends going back to work after a big summer tournament took 409 shares on Instagram, 11 times the Instagram average for shares. On Facebook it did 415 views and one share. The three tournament posts did 739, 598 and 415 views there. The most viewed of them on Instagram, a nine-slide carousel with 29,864 views, never ran on Facebook at all.
The report’s read: sharing about a moment people were in, with friends in the joke, is an Instagram behavior for this brand. On Facebook, the same audience watches what’s useful and keeps it to itself.
What to post where
| What’s on screen | On Instagram | On Facebook | Do this |
|---|---|---|---|
| A trick you could copy tonight | 2.36x average views | 1.4x average views | Post on both. Lead Facebook with it. |
| A joke about friends or a shared moment | Top shares on the account | Under 1,000 views | Instagram first. |
| The can as the character | Shares when the can does something on screen | The only double-digit share post | Both. Try stills on Facebook. |
| Unusual places with nothing happening | 0.30x average views | 0.13x average views | Rethink. Make something happen. |
| 3D animation | Lowest on the account | Not in the Facebook set | Stop. |
The point isn’t that Facebook is weak. It delivered the single biggest post of the summer. It does a different job: reach for useful things. Planning it like a smaller Instagram wastes that.
A simple way to test it: take one friend-group post that worked on Instagram and run it on both platforms in the same week, alongside a new how-to made for Facebook. Compare each platform against its own average. One round won’t settle it, but two or three will show you whether the pattern holds for your brand.
A checklist for your next plan
- Pull views and shares per post for each platform separately. Work out each platform’s own average.
- Sort posts by what’s on screen, and give each group a median on each platform.
- Mark the groups that lead on views on both platforms. Those are your safe cross-posts.
- Mark the posts that took shares on one platform and died on the other. Plan those for the platform that shares.
- On a platform where most posts get zero or one share, judge on views. Ignore share rate there.
- Try one format made for the platform that watches: a still, a how-to, a step people can repeat.
Questions worth asking your team: Do we read each platform against its own average? Which of our posts ran on one platform only, and why? Which format would we make only for Facebook?
Common mistakes, and what this doesn’t prove
- Adding platforms together. A combined number hides that one platform shares and the other doesn’t.
- Judging Facebook on Instagram’s winners. The posts that won Instagram on shares were among the weakest on Facebook. Read each platform on its own terms.
- Ranking Facebook by share rate. With 24 of 29 posts at zero or one share, the rate ranks groups on single shares. It’s noise.
- Cross-posting everything. Sixteen Facebook posts used the same video as an Instagram post. Some of the best Instagram posts never made it over, and some did nothing there.
The samples are small. Every Facebook group is eight posts or fewer, and groups under four posts are directional. Three Facebook photo posts couldn’t be fetched and took their Instagram twin’s label on an exact caption match. Share counts come from the brand’s social tool; Instagram exposes no share count to any tool, so they can’t be checked against the platform. This is one brand, one summer. It shows what happened on each platform. It doesn’t show why, and it doesn’t show which posts sold. For that, posts need lining up with your own numbers. Our guide to watched versus shared covers the share math. To see what your own platforms do, try it free.