First, let’s re-frame cross-posting to cross-promoting. It’s super easy and time-saving to just copy and paste each caption and post it on all platforms, but there is a more effective way to share content that will keep your followers engaged and help your business in the long term: cross-promoting.
Best practices for cross-posting and cross-promoting
Not all content has to be shared across all platforms. Consider the relevance
It’s crucial to understand that users go to different social media platforms to see different types of content. For instance, they go to Twitter when they want to learn more about current events that are taking place, or any other news-related content. They go to Instagram when they want to see beautiful photos or scroll through some lighter content. That being said, if you want to promote a sale you’re having or your item of the week, you’re better off not posting it to Twitter as it won’t be very relevant to the platform or resonate with that particular audience. Instead, promote it on Instagram and maybe Facebook where you’re bound to receive a better response.
Don’t post everything at the same time. Look at your analytics on each platform for the best time to post.
Users interact with each platform differently and at different times – therefore, it’s important to understand your analytics for each platform. Your analytics can tell you a lot about how your content performs and can help you to learn when you should be posting what on which platforms in order to receive the most engagement on your posts. Maybe with Facebook, your posts perform the best on Monday afternoons, but your posts on Instagram actually perform the worst on Mondays altogether. It’s safe to say that you should avoid posting to Instagram on Mondays and instead post on another day when your post is more likely to receive better engagement.
Optimize the caption and image
In order to keep your social media feed flowing smoothly, it’s important to ensure that your image/video is the right size and quality for the platforms it’s being posted on. For example, all of the images that you post to Instagram (as a grid post, not a story) should be cropped at 1080px by 1080px, but this image size doesn’t work for images with Tweets on Twitter. Check out this handy guide by Sprout Social to help you along the way!
It’s also equally important to ensure the caption is compelling, to the point, and complementary to the image. Remember, users on these platforms are likely scrolling quickly through their feeds because they are bored and have time to kill. Make them want to stop and look at what you are trying to share with them. When cross-posting the same content across multiple social media platforms, you should always tweak the caption so that it is different and more suitable to reach the audience on each of the platforms. For example, LinkedIn users tend to be business professionals or job seekers, so you should stick to a more professional tone than you would on Instagram.
Include a clear call-to-action for that specific audience
And finally, if there is a specific action that you want users to take, such as visiting the link in your bio, then just say so! Be sure to let them know what you have to offer to them and why they should do what you’re asking them to do. For example, “check out the link in our bio for more information
If you’re reading this and you’re not sure how to create a cross-promoting strategy, get in touch with us today! Or if you need help making changes to your social media accounts, Reach Digital can help you today! It would be our pleasure to do an audit of your business’ social media content and presence complimentary.