It seems that every year brings an additional social media platform that soon becomes the hot new thing. And while you may be eager to get your business on each as they gain traction, it can be difficult to manage to create unique content for each platform you’re active on.
This leads many businesses to consider cross-posting the same content to each of their social media channels. And while cross-posting can be helpful in reducing your overall social workload, there are times when it may not be appropriate – and can actually harm your performance.
What is Cross-Posting?
If you aren’t familiar with the term, cross-posting is simply the act of sharing the same content across multiple social media pages. For example, you could make one video, and post it on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. This helps reduce the time that you or your social team has to spend creating content. So who can benefit the most from cross-posting?
- Small businesses with a limited marketing budget
- New businesses that don’t have much content posted yet
- Social media teams who want to focus more on strategy than content creation
The Benefits of Cross-Posting
The biggest benefit of cross-posting is that it saves you and your team time. This can really come in handy if you are trying to stay active on multiple social media channels. Instead of having to create unique content for every channel each week, you have the ability to focus on just a few quality posts, and share them across all of your channels.
Another benefit to this tactic is that it can help you reach a broader audience. Always wanted to utilize Instagram, but didn’t have the time to dedicate to it? Cross-posting can help build an audience without investing hours of your time each day.
Potential Drawbacks
While it’s always easiest to see the benefits of new tactics, cross-posting can have some drawbacks as well.
The biggest is that not all platforms are created equal. While some focus on images, others focus on text. And, certain platforms are more popular within certain age groups, which can make some posts ineffective depending on who your target audience is.
The last drawback is that, if you have a lot of overlap in your followers across platforms, they are going to see duplicate content each week. This can be a turn-off that leads to a reduction in engagement or followers as they get bored or overwhelmed with your content.
Cross Posting Mistakes to Avoid
So, how can you utilize cross-posting while avoiding the drawbacks? Simply avoid a few common mistakes.
Don’t post the same content across all of your channels. Pick and choose which posts will go where to avoid overwhelming followers with the same content.
Each platform is different, and thus certain content will perform better than others. Tweak the content you want to cross-post to suit each platform it is going to be shared to.
Don’t post content that has a watermark from a different platform. This is more relevant in videos that you downloaded from your TikTok to share to another platform. Instagram has started to flag these posts as “recycled content,” and deprioritizes them in your followers’ feeds. Instead, edit and prep your videos on a third-party platform so that it’s watermark-free.
Reduce Work Time and Boost Engagement
When done correctly, cross posting can be an effective way to grow your online presence. It means less time spent on content creation, and more spent on posting and optimizing your channels for maximum impact and performance.
If you’re looking for help implementing your social media presence, we are here to help. Gulf Coast Web has decades of experience in managing digital marketing and social media for business across all industries. Our staff consists of highly-trained web design and digital marketing professionals who are both passionate about their jobs and excel at what they do. And unlike many other design agencies, we have a content writer with over 10 years of experience on-staff to handle everything from website copy to blogs to social media posts. Contact us today to book a consultation with our team. We look forward to outlining exactly how we can help you grow your business with our digital media agency services.