Should you ask a creator to post the video on Instagram too?

You sell a grippy travel yoga mat, the one that rolls down to the size of a water bottle. One creator is booked for one video on their TikTok account, and the offer and brief go out this week. On this morning's call somebody had the creator's Instagram open while they talked, and asked whether the same video could go up there too. It's free reach.

Yes, because the video is getting made anyway. No, because you booked a TikTok campaign. Neither answer has looked at what the second post would be.

So what would you be buying?

A second post, not a permission.

The reflex is to file this under rights, so be exact. Our usage rights guide opens its list with an instruction: "Open the plan and underline every place the video appears that isn't the creator's own post. Each underline is one of three asks." The three it names are "Reposting it from your own account", "Running it as paid media from your own account", and "Running ads through the creator's handle".

A post on the creator's Instagram is none of those. The video would go up on an account they own, in front of the people who follow it, on the same page as everything else they post. The guide's three asks cover places the video appears beyond the post you're buying, and this one doesn't fit any of them. What you'd be buying is the post itself.

That makes it the subject of the other guide, in a version that guide doesn't cover. Ours on asking for one more post is written for the ask that arrives after a video has been delivered and paid for, and what carries over here is structural: "whatever you didn't agree has no price on it yet". Nothing has been delivered in your case, because the offer hasn't gone out. So this isn't work added to a finished job. It's a post your offer hasn't priced.

For the mat: the line on the call was free reach, and the first word to fix is free. The ask on the table is a second post, on an account you haven't booked, and your offer has no number for it.

Who would be seeing it?

People you haven't looked at yet.

This is where it parts company with an extra post on the same account. The test in our one-more-post guide is one sentence — "Name the one thing the second post would put in front of their followers that the first one didn't" — and it's hard to pass, because "A post stands in front of an audience, and the first post already went out to this one." A post on another platform is a different case. The test asks about the people standing in front of the post, and it was written for the people the first post goes out to; who follows a second account is a separate question. How much the two overlap is something you don't know, and this article can't tell you.

What you can say is where that uncertainty comes from. You chose this creator by reading their TikTok account, and that reading doesn't travel. Our guide to comparing creators by engagement rate found one competitor's guide to calculating engagement rate for Instagram naming four formulas, where "two of those four divide by numbers nobody outside the account can open: impressions and a count of the separate people a post got to." Its conclusion about those formulas is the part that matters here: "Both were named for Instagram rather than TikTok, so neither is a formula for the platform your three candidates post on." Run that backwards and you have your position on the second account. The numbers you read on TikTok aren't readings of that one, and half the formulas named for that platform divide by figures only its owner can open.

One competitor's guide to working with TikTok and Instagram influencers hands brands a split by platform, down to "for younger audiences stick to TikTok, and for more mature ones you can rely on Instagram." We haven't checked that recommendation. What it shows is that even a guide covering both platforms plans the two audiences separately.

Whether those are people you want is the question you haven't asked yet, and it's the one you asked about the first account.

For the mat: you picked this creator off their TikTok videos. Nobody on your side has opened the Instagram account for anything except noticing that it exists.

Can the video you're getting even run there?

That depends on what's playing under it.

The sound on a sponsored post isn't an open choice, and our guide to telling a creator which sound to use works through what TikTok's own library terms allow. For a commercial use, those terms keep a video with one of its sounds "within TikTok." Our guide puts what follows plainly: "Anywhere else, they say you need separate permission and a license directly from the sound's rights holders." And the moment that matters isn't the moment of filming: "The terms put the deadline at the placement: by the time the cut runs off TikTok, its sound has to be licensed there."

An Instagram post is off TikTok. So the file about to be made for your TikTok campaign can be a file whose sound isn't licensed to run there, and the reason is the track rather than the creator or your agreement with them.

Two boundaries come with that, both from the same guide. It sets its own limit, covering tracks and other sounds from that library rather than a creator talking over their own video, so a video carried by the creator's own voice is a case that guide doesn't cover. And the call isn't yours to make from a brief: "whether a particular sound may run where you plan to run it is a question for whoever handles your licensing." The brief can name where the video will run before anybody picks a sound; making that sound available is somebody else's job.

The two run on separate lines, as that guide says: "Licensing the sound doesn't settle the creator's usage rights." So the sound is a second gate, standing beside a post nobody has agreed to yet, and the agreement can't open it.

For the mat: nobody on your side has licensed a sound for anything, and the brief is about to tell the creator to pick a track from TikTok's library. That's the right line for a TikTok post. It's also the line that leaves the Instagram post out of reach for this video unless a sound licensed for that placement is already in hand, and the offer goes out this week.

What goes in the offer, and when?

One line, before the shoot.

Where the video posts is the offer's to settle. Our pre-shoot guide sets out two versions of one booking ("Same creator, same brief. Different purchase.") and says where the answer lands in two places — "the offer settles it" — with one line of the brief telling the creator.

Its signal for telling those two apart is "whose audience are you buying?", which separates a post on the creator's account from a file going to your ad account. Yours are two posts rather than a post and a file, and the same line settles them, because the people who follow an account are "attached to the account, not to the file". Two accounts are two audiences, so they're two things to price.

One competitor's brand-side guide to usage rights already tells brands to "Clearly clarify how the content will be reused. In this case for paid social and explain on which platform E.g. Meta or TikTok", about the brand's own reuse rather than the creator's post, but the line goes in the same place.

The timing argument in the pre-shoot guide is about what happens to your position later: "you want these terms priced against the campaign rather than against how much you like one file." The sound guide lands in the same place from the other direction, settling the placement question "earlier than the terms require, with the brief and the offer, before the creator picks a sound."

Put together, the line you're writing now has two honest versions. Either the plan includes a post on the second platform, in which case the sound for that placement gets answered before the brief goes out and the offer prices two posts. Or the plan doesn't, in which case this is a TikTok video and the second platform waits for a video briefed for it. Asking later stays available either way — as the one-more-post guide says of its own ask, "None of that is a reason to leave the ask unmade" — and a later ask is its own priced ask.

If you keep the second post, one more line travels with it: the disclosure. Our guide to what belongs in a creator brief is blunt about it: "Disclosure is a facts line, and the strictest one on the list." A second post is a second place that line has to appear, and the creator can't produce it from anything except what you hand them.

For the mat: the team takes the Instagram post out of the plan for this video. The offer prices one post on the creator's TikTok account, the brief keeps its line about where the sound can come from, and nobody is asking for a second post three weeks from now when the first one is doing well. If that audience is worth a post, it gets a video of its own.

Frequently asked questions

They offered to post it on Instagram themselves. Does that change anything?

Nothing in your plan. A post on their account is theirs to make, and your plan can count on it only once it's in the offer and they've taken it.

The sound question doesn't move either: a library sound's permission stops at TikTok, whoever posts the video.

Should we ask for a second video made for Instagram instead?

That's a separate booking with its own brief, and it gets priced as one.

Its sound line gets written for that placement before anybody films: the route our sound guide describes as getting a sound licensed for every placement in the plan and naming that sound in the brief. The same file can take that route too, when the second post is in the plan before the brief goes out.

A video commissioned for that account also puts the audience question in the brief.

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