Social Media Cross-Posting Quick Guide

Do you remember the concept of “cross-pollination” from high school? Perhaps you’re a gardener and this term is still a part of your everyday language. Every horticulturist knows that cross-pollination is essential to a garden’s flourishing.

Interestingly, what is true of science seems to hold true for social media marketing. This article provides a quick guide to social media “cross-posting.” If you’ve ever wondered how to balance social media platforms and whether or not it’s advised to use the same content on Instagram and Twitter, this article is for you!

Read on to understand how to use cross-posting for your business’s success.

What is Social Media Cross-Posting?

“Social media cross-posting” is the term for posting the same content across multiple social media platforms. When done correctly, cross-posting can be helpful, and the features of today’s social media make it easier than ever to make content serve double duty across platforms.

However, as hubspot coaches, “Just because you can cross-post everywhere doesn’t mean you should.”

Cross-posting, while beneficial when done right, comes with its pitfalls. In short, if you post identical content across platforms, your social media strategy may come across as dull and flat. Just as you eventually drown out the coworker who tells the same stories at every company party, your audience will eventually drown out your posts once they realize the same content appears across all of your sites.

Identical cross-posting can also read as unprofessional. Each social media platform has its own set of specs and strengths, including variances in character limits, image sizes, typical post length, and video capabilities. Failing to leverage these differences implies you don’t know what you’re doing on social media. Whether or not this is a false correlation, consumers tend to transfer your branding over to your product or service offerings.

In other words, social media marketing is not a “one-size-fits-all” approach, and your customers will notice if your content doesn’t fit your platforms. In order to optimize your social media presence, you should vary the format and content of your posts to meet various audiences and platforms. As hootsuite clarifies, “Posting the same content to multiple social platforms is like giving the same exact advice to multiple friends. You might give them the same type of counsel, but the words you choose and tone you use will vary depending on the person.” To share your brand across platforms in the most appropriate way to reach the people you want to reach is cross-posting done right.

Why People Cross-Post

However, even with such risks, there are many reasons to cross-post.

For one, it saves businesses time and effort. Instead of reinventing the wheel, businesses can maximize their time producing a video, designing a Canva graphic, or creating excellent copy by using it to serve multiple platforms. This can be especially helpful for new businesses, where time is often at a premium.

Additionally, it can expand a business’s social media presence. Whereas a business might only be able to fuel one or two platforms by creating new posts for each, cross-posting could allow activity on multiple additional platforms. More media presence increases audience reach, which could, in turn, increase sales.

Perhaps the strongest benefit is cross-posting’s ability to increase brand recognition. When audiences see your brand pop up on multiple platforms, it can improve their awareness of and security with the brand, making them more likely to use or recommend the brand in the future. After all, for some customers, “in sight” is the same as “in mind.”

Best Practices for Social Media Cross-Posting

Since cross-posting holds such great power to be harmful or helpful, it’s essential to know how to use it well. Whether you’re a new business owner or an experienced one who is looking to improve your social media presence, what should you aim for in your posts?

Although the “best” way to market varies across businesses, the following best practices for cross-posting will provide a helpful place to start.

Know your platforms.

Every social media platform is different in terms of usage, features, and strengths. As for gardeners, it’s important for marketers to learn the best environments, conditions, and times for growth and maximize those for success. Posting a video on TikTok at one time of day, for instance, may not have effects if posted on Facebook at a different time. Getting to know each platform will help you see what content, timing, and frequencies are best to reach your target demographic.

As a general rule of thumb, follow this graph:

Figure 1: Platform Uses and Strengths

Know your demographic(s).

To know which platforms and features might be best for your business, you’ll need to pinpoint your ideal clientele. Ask yourself what their age, gender, interests, and internet habits are likely to be. Knowing the types of content likely to grab your audience and the time(s) of the day they are most likely to receive it can take you far in determining your social media strategy. Since technology is ever-changing, conducting systematic research on social media marketing trends is a good idea to know who is using what.

Avoid redundancy.

hootsuite compares posting the same content across your social media feeds to the guy at the party who tells the same story over and over to everyone at the party. If you only post one graphic, message, etc., it becomes the content that people will share on their other feeds, thus becoming old news fairly quickly.

Additionally, it risks being misconfigured since not all video and graphic formats, character limits, and filters convey across platforms. For these reasons, consider the “one and done” rule and determine not to cross-post identical content. By creating different content across your channels (even if those differences are minor tweaks to essential content), you are apt to reach more people.

Use analytics.

Consulting analytics pages is the best way to learn which platforms and content are right for your business and customers. Social media analytics pages measure platform behaviors and post engagement to help profile owners optimize their content. While most platforms have designed user-friendly analytics pages, it’s also possible to take classes, read blogs, and attend seminars to learn how to wield better the information they reveal.

Keeping tabs on your analytics might show surprising results (e.g., perhaps some posts perform better if you post them during less-active hours); just as good gardeners perform recon at the end of the growing season, it’s crucial to regularly use analytics to see which social-media growth techniques worked and which didn’t.

Do what you can.

Perfectionism has killed many a dream; don’t let the overwhelming amount of knowledge and options out there keep you from the action! One post is better than none. And while it’s probably a good idea to learn basic color theory and graphic design principles over time, you can still get pretty far with premade templates or text content. Social media marketing growth is a journey – you might as well do what you can and enjoy it.

Look forward to the day when you can scale up your number of posts or platforms, but also remember that small gardens can be beautiful. Instead of pressuring yourself to make entirely new posts for each platform, consider taking a base post and tweaking the graphic, video, or text content to fit particular platforms better. Sometimes it takes only a few seconds to change the wording or swap out a different image. Such minor differences can help avoid cross-posting pitfalls while making less work for you. In short, while it’s great to work towards excellence, you don’t have to overdo it. You’ll get farther doing what you can.

Practice advance scheduling.

Whenever possible, plan out your posts in advance. This is a great way to create continuity across your brand, stagger your content, and save time. Using tools such as Meta, Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social can be great options to help you schedule posts and then forget about them. Having a set of consistent posts in the pike will also free you up to create organic, spontaneous posts as the month progresses.

Strive for consistency.

Consistency is the key to success. Whatever you do, post regularly and keep true to your brand.

Need Some Help?

Are you feeling in over your head? You’re not alone. Digital marketing expert and founder of Mauco Enterprises, ademola abimbola , acknowledges that “even skilled social media marketers and content creators may find these challenging” and that there’s no magic solution.

All good gardeners have tools that help them grow things. There is no shame in gleaning from the plethora of social media marketing resources that are out there. Most platforms have customer service support teams and website FAQs to answer common questions. Many blogs exist to help you develop advanced scheduling and marketing strategies to take you to the next level.

If you don’t have the time you need to commit to updating your social media marketing game, consider hiring a social media manager. While you may retain a supervisory role over your socials to some degree, you’ll hand off the bulk of the work to the assistant (who is often highly skilled in advanced strategies) so that you can spend more time on the non-delegable tasks that your business requires.

Luneer Mgmt offers social media managing services and is happy to help establish and monitor your platforms and campaigns. Call us today to see what we can take off your plate and to start imagining the possibilities of your business’s social media.

Written by Katie Barnett

WRITTEN BY: KATIE BARNETT