Introduction
As the digital world continues to evolve, the need for online users to share, communicate and express themselves increases. A handful of digital platforms are emerging left and right to accommodate this ever-growing demand.
As a result, the world has seen the rise in popularity of several major digital platforms such as Tik Tok, Discord, and Twitch over the past few years. This sheer amount of emerging platforms is now a headache for marketers.
In order to connect with their customers as often and as effectively as possible, brands need to keep tabs and be present on all available digital platforms. Considering the massive number of platforms there are, curating content specifically for each platform is seemingly an impossible task.
Luckily there is an answer to this problem. In this article, we will be discussing the positives and the negatives of cross-posting and going over what you should and shouldn’t do when applying this method to your own marketing strategy.
Hopefully, when you finish this article, you will gain a sizable knowledge of this tactic and be able to leverage your business to the next level.
What Is Cross-Posting?
As the name suggests, cross-posting is a process of posting similar content or message across multiple channels or platforms. To give you a clearer idea, imagine instead of producing a video and posting it only on your Facebook page. You can also cross-post it to your other social networks, such as Tik Tok, Twitter, and Youtube.
Cross posting.
Should You Integrate Cross-Posting As Part Of Your Marketing Plan?
Short Answer
If you are among the ones listed below, you definitely should pick up this strategy:
- SMBs with limited marketing budgets
- New startups lack human resources, leading to one person taking on multiple roles.
- Emerging brands that have not yet produced a lot of content
- Content marketers who prefer quality over quantity that wish to deliver compelling posts
- Time-conscious social media marketers that want to save time for developing strategy and brainstorming ideas
If you still cannot make up your mind after reading the listing above, we would like to present you with the advantages and disadvantages of cross-posting so that you can evaluate this decision yourself.
Advantages
By taking advantage of cross-posting, digital marketing strategists can save a lot of time and resources from crafting channel-specific content and spend this valuable time elsewhere, like analyzing the statistics and brainstorming ideas.
On top of the obvious upsides, cross-posting is also a highly effective tactic in optimizing posting strategy, allowing marketers to repurpose their content and keeping their social media pages fresh.
Most importantly, this strategy is beneficial in increasing brand awareness. By getting your message shared across several social channels, brands are more likely to meet their target audience than tunnel visioning on a selected few.
Disadvantages
The first downside of cross-posting is due to the difference among social channels. What works on one platform might adversely affect another, so it’s hard to find a consistent formula for this technique.
Another drawback of this strategy is that customers who subscribe to your brand on multiple channels will receive the same content on their feeds. This can subsequently result in customers seeing your content as spam and being less interested.
Cross-Posting Strategy For Business Success
Readjust For Different Platforms
Each digital platform operates differently and accommodates a certain post format. It’s the marketers’ job to be mindful of these differences and make necessary tweaks to their content accordingly when cross-posting for maximum effectiveness.
For example, the character limit for each post on Facebook is 2000 characters, whereas, on Twitter, it is condensed to 280. Meaning that brands need to cherry-pick the most captivating element of the Facebook post or compact the message down when cross-posting to Twitter in order to garner the most interaction.
Another example of this is the different preferred image and video sizes between platforms. Let’s say you would like to cross-post a video from your business’s Tik Tok page, which prefers 9:16 aspect ratio videos, to your Instagram page, which follows a 1:1 aspect ratio. In that case, the video needs to be slightly cropped and edited to fit Instagram standards.
Cross-posting strategies.
Below we would like to show you a few more parameters you’ll need to consider tweaking a little bit when cross-posting:
- Clickable links
- Hashtags
- The platform’s culture and vocabulary
- The platform’s demographics
- Message
- Call to actions
Scheduled posts
In general, timing is a crucial aspect of marketing, and it is no exception when applying to cross-posting. In order to achieve maximum impact on your post, marketing strategists should take note of the most effective time to post on each platform and schedule to post appropriately.
On top of that, scheduling posts also saves you time and manpower to do other tasks. Most digital platforms nowadays have implemented a scheduled post feature. With a little setup, the post will automatically go live instead of needing someone patiently waiting for the right time to hit that post button.
One And Done
No customer wants to hear your story or message twice. The intriguing and curious factors of absorbing new information are not there when presented for the second time.
It’s important that every cross-post effort is one and done, meaning the post needs to be appropriate to the platforms they are on. By posting the same thing across all your social media, your audience might get bored and annoyed when presented with the same repetition when they access a new platform and view your marketing strategy as bland and uninspiring.
All in all, tailoring content to fit in line with the corresponding platforms will create an impression of professionalism to your customers, which increases their respect and attention to your brands.
Be Creative
In order to stick out of the crowd of other competitions pursuing the same cross-posting strategy, you need to be creative with your posts.
Though seemingly a boring task, cross-posting can be a great opportunity for you to flex your creative muscles and experiment with new ideas to work around each platform’s requirements.
For example, you can assess the demographics of different social networks and slide in a few slang terms that are trending among the platforms to appear more “in the loop” and more connected to your audience.
Social networks and cross-posting.
Analyze
It’s important for businesses to analyze the results after every cross-post effort. By reassessing the numbers, you will be able to tell whether your campaign has achieved the desired expectations or not and act accordingly.
Final Thoughts
Cross-posting, if applied correctly, can definitely level up your online presence. Every strategy has its positives and negatives, and it is your job as a marketer to understand the risk and the rewards so as to avoid the former and achieve successful outcomes.
That is it for our article about cross-posting strategy for business success. We hope to have introduced you to another effective marketing strategy and help encourage you to integrate it into your operation.
