Cross-Posting Mistakes You Should Never Make
January 16th, 2020 by
While you should be posting on social media, especially if you have a new piece of content you want to share, make sure you don’t cross-post on different platforms. Even if it’s easiest to figure out one social media post and call it a day, cross-posting can have negative effects.
What Is Cross-Posting?
Cross-posting is posting identical content across multiple social media channels. Posting the same exact content to multiple social platforms is like giving the same exact advice to multiple friends. You might give them the same type of advice, but the words you choose and tone you use will vary depending on the person. Like friends, different social platforms have different personalities, which is why crafting content for those platforms should involve a one-size-fits-all approach.
Cross-Posting: Nope.
Right about now you’re probably thinking, “creating content for social media is hard enough, and now you’re telling me I can’t just post the same content across multiple social networks?” Why, yes, that is exactly what I am telling you.
The things your friends ‘like’ on one platform aren’t the same things your followers will retweet on another. The language, tone, visuals, and overall formatting best practices for Instagram aren’t the same for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. When crafting a social post, it’s important to be mindful of the following:
- The audience on the platform you’re posting and talking to
- You’ll want your tone and message to be more professional when crafting a LinkedIn post, whereas you’re encouraged to take a more casual approach on Instagram.
- The formatting differences per platform
- When it comes to Twitter, you’re limited to 280 characters per Tweet. Whereas on Instagram, you have 2,200 characters per post. Should you create content with a one-size-fits-all-platforms approach, you run the risk of your Tweet cutting off in the middle of your sentence due to character limitations, or a bad handle being included within your Tweet due to someone’s handle varying across platforms
- The guidelines per platform to monitor and prevent spammy activity
- Last year, Twitter announced new guidelines surrounding the use of automation and posting the same (or substantially similar) content over multiple accounts you control.
Cross-Promotion: Yep.
Cross-promotion, in addition to being your saving grace within the realm of creating unique social media content, is the idea of promoting the same overall topic across platforms but in a way that is suitable for the varying personalities, formatting requirements, and guidelines of each platform. And using them to your advantage!
Having one topic about your business and/or brand that you want to share across multiple social media channels is not the “no-no” we’re discussing here. Instead, it’s sharing that topic in the same exact way across multiple platforms. Creating unique posts for each platform may sound overwhelming, but this idea of cross-promotion can help ease this process.
- Think of a topic you want to share on your channels
- Create a couple of sentences promoting this topic, providing the necessary information, etc.
- Take those sentences and apply tweaks for each platform you want to post to, being mindful of all of the considerations mentioned above
- Push out unique, engaging, and easy-to-create content that successfully caters to each social media platform
Creating unique social media content that is specifically catered to each social media platform is a great way to keep users engaged with both your brand and your brand’s voice. At Search Influence, we’re always keeping the personalities, requirements, and best practices of individual platforms top-of-mind when creating social media content for our clients. To learn more about how we can help you and your marketing efforts, give us a call today at (504) 208-3900.
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