Can I cross-post the same content across different social media networks?

Social media has evolved into an essential tool for goings-on such as marketing websites, putting on digital marketing campaigns, providing customer support as well as circulating your fresh blog posts. Putting an active social media strategy into effect is vitally important if you want to run a fruitful online business and engage with your prospective clients.

Unfortunately, using social media can be complex because of the wide variety of platforms, tools in addition to techniques that are available in the social media marketing world. Possessing a good understanding of the best way to share your content effectively across a variety of social media channels is not always crystal clear.

What, exactly, is meant by cross-posting?

The term ‘cross-posting’ designates the act of sharing precisely the identical post across several social media platforms. ‘Cross-posting’ can also mean the posting of the same content on the same account several times over.

Just like with any negative habit, cross-posting is extremely enticing. The reason for this is that:

• It maintains your accounts in an active state,
• It saves time, and
• Makes it simpler to spread your content to as many individuals as you can.

In fact, Instagram makes it so easy for you to cross-post content because when you’ve designed your Instagram post you’re given the option of sharing your post on Facebook in addition to Twitter. However, the short-term advantages of cross-posting outweigh long-term drawbacks.

Pros of Cross-Posting

Posting exactly the same content on a number of social networks has a number of definite benefits:

• Ensuring that all of your social networks are kept “active”.
• Ensuring that every single one your accounts look to be “alive” to fans in addition to followers. If social media users have the impression that a company’s accounts haven’t been posted on in a couple of weeks, these people will most probably stop paying attention. Posting regular updates to all of your social media accounts will make sure they stay “alive” and relevant to users.
• Cross-posting the exactly the same content to several social network platforms will assist you with saving a lot of time. Putting the same material in a number of different locations will cut down a lot on the time which you spend online looking for things to share and putting together new content.

Cons of Cross-Posting

Apart from some of the big “pros” of cross-posting, the technique does have some disadvantages:

• One of the most noteworthy disadvantages is that many social networks are optimised for diverse types of content. An update which will draw a lot of attention on Twitter will not get the same kind of response – or get the same amount of pull – on Facebook. Networks which are more specialised – for example Instagram and Pinterest – will not even have the same categories of content that your Twitter feed does. Posting exactly the same items to a number of different networks shows that you aren’t utilising each unique system to its maximum potential.
• Also, through posting matching content on various platforms, your fans who are loyal to you and follow you on the different social networks may get the impression that they are being cheated. Alternatively, they will not be as invested in your content as opposed to if you posted different things on each network. If you don’t follow this practice, you will get the advantage of providing your most loyal fans with a variety of content to interact with. In addition, you will see your post engagement rate grow.

If you are concernted about the harmful impact of cross-posting content, you can make use of cross-promotion as an substitute. Cross-promotion uses one piece of content which is posted to one or two social media platforms. This content is then endorsed across other channels.

This approach means that you are not spamming the same piece of content across a number of different networks. However, what you are doing is letting all of your followers be aware of the material. You must still take care to tailor your message to the audience on each social platform. It can be a convenient approach and avoids some of the negative aspects of cross-posting content.

Get in touch with the Digital School of Marketing

If you want to learn more regarding social media marketing and how it can benefit your business, we really suggest that you do a Social Media Marketing Course such as the one which we offer. Follow this link for more information.