As the number of digital platforms is growing year after year, social media marketers need to follow the trends and stay up to date. The main difficulty with social media platforms is that there are a lot of them, and if your target audience uses those platforms, then you should be on them too in order to reach your potential customers. This can become a real challenge for social media marketers because being on a lot of digital platforms means creating more content for each of them, which can be very time-consuming. Before you manage to get concerned about this, let us tell you that, luckily, there is a solution for this and it is called cross-posting.
What Does Cross-Posting Mean?
Cross-posting simply refers to the process of posting the same content across different social media platforms. As simple as it may sound, don’t get too excited about it, as it contains hidden threats, and as a marketer, you have to be aware of those threats so as not to harm your social media strategy and continue delivering content that your audience likes and expects. Be careful with cross-posting on social media, as you may annoy your audience.
Cross-posting doesn’t mean that the content posted on various platforms has to look exactly the same. You can change the format. For example, if you have created an infographic for your Facebook page, you can turn that infographic into a video and post it on LinkedIn or Instagram. The important part here is to keep the core idea of the content and distribute it in a format that works best for each social media platform.
Who Can Benefit From Cross-Posting?
Cross-posting on social media can be beneficial for the following companies and people:
- Small companies that are budget-sensitive
- Newly created companies that haven’t managed yet to create much content
- For marketers and creators who want to save time and focus on analyzing the data and improving their social media strategy
The Pros of Cross-Posting
Cross-posting on social media is a strategy that can benefit marketers and brands in several ways. Let’s go through some of them.
Save time: Some people may think that creating content is an easy job, but creating content that speaks to your target audience’s needs, grabs their attention, and keeps their interests, eventually turning them into loyal customers and brand ambassadors, is actually a very hard and time-consuming job. So, using cross-posting as a technique to free up some time and concentrate on improving social media strategy and creating more engaging content is a life saver for social media marketers.
Reach a wider audience: When you create content, you want it to be seen by as many people as possible. But by relying only on organic reach, it will be difficult to achieve it only by using one social media platform. Be sure to engage with multiple social media platforms when you post.
The Cons of Cross-Posting
Everything has its benefits and drawbacks. Cross-posting is no different. So, let’s see what disadvantages cross-posting has.
Formatting on different social media platforms: When deciding to post on multiple social media platforms, you should take into consideration that each platform is different and has its own requirements and formatting options. For example, the character limit or video duration differs across platforms. This is why marketers need to tailor content to each social media platform not to harm their audience’s experience and brand image.
Bore your audience: The same people may follow you on different social media platforms, and if they see the same content, they may get bored quickly and stop paying attention to what you post. To avoid this, you don’t have to cross-post everything and should be very creative in how you present the same content across different platforms.
Looking spammy: As we mentioned above, cross-posting contains some risks, and one of them is looking spammy. Social media marketers need to understand the nuances of each digital platform and edit their content according to the specific needs of each platform. Otherwise, the brand may look robotic and unprofessional. And marketers know that losing the target audience’s trust is the worst thing that can happen to a brand.
What Are The Best Practices of Cross-Posting?
After learning about the pros and cons of cross-posting, let’s now dig into the best practices for it.
Be Aware of Each Social Media Platform’s Requirements
As we already mentioned, each platform is unique, and using them to their full advantage will require marketers to know what’s unique about them beforehand. Play with their rules, and you’ll see an increase in your audience’s engagement. Of course, this also depends on the quality of your content.
Don’t Cross-Post Everything
Social media platforms are not created equal. It means content that works well for one platform, may not work for another. For example, Reels or short videos work well on Instagram and TikTok, but they will not be good for Twitter. You have to engage your audience based on how they behave on each platform. So, don’t forget about this when creating your content strategy.
Use Social Media Cross-Posting Tools
Now that you already know what cross-posting is, what benefits and disadvantages it has, let’s see how you can make its implementation easier. If you wonder how to cross-post from Facebook to Instagram, there are actually a bunch of tools out there that you can use to save time and cross-post every piece of content you create not only from Facebook to Instagram but also to other platforms. When choosing a cross-posting tool, you should consider the one that has the following features: scheduling, customization, and analytics.
Scheduling is very important because you don’t want to forget to post any content. You can prepare posts for each month beforehand and schedule them in advance. The next important feature your cross-posting tool must have is customization. It should allow you to customize every piece of content according to the requirements of different social media platforms. And finally, the tool has to provide analytics. You don’t post content just for the sake of posting it. You need to track their performance to see what your best performing content is and improve your strategy accordingly.
If implemented properly, cross-posting will be a great asset to your social media marketing strategy. Just follow the best practices of it and don’t overuse it.
If you need help with managing your social media accounts and creating your cross-posting strategy, feel free to reach out to us because our team is here to support you in improving your digital presence.