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

Social media has developed into an essential tool for activities such as marketing websites, running digital marketing campaigns, offering customer support, disseminating your fresh blog post. Putting  an effective social media strategy into effect is crucial if you have the intention of running a successful online business as well as engaging with your potential clients.

Sadly, making use of social media can be complicated owing to the wide variety of platforms, tools, as well as techniques which are available in the social media marketing world. Having a good understanding of how to share your content effectively across channels is not always clear. This may eventually lead to a loss of brand reputation as well as customer loyalty.

What is cross-posting?

The term ‘cross-posting’ refers to the act of sharing precisely same post across various social media platforms. Alternatively, cross-posting can also refer to the posting of the same content on the same account a number of times.
Just as with any bad habit, cross-posting is very tempting. This is because:

• It keeps your accounts active,
• Saves time, as well as
• Makes it easy to spread your content to as many people as possible. 

In fact, Instagram makes it easy for you to cross-post content as once you’ve crafted your Instagram post you’re presented with the option of sharing your post on Facebook and Twitter. However, the short-term advantages of cross-posting outweigh the long-term drawbacks.

Pros of Cross-Posting

Posting exactly the same content on numerous social networks has several definite benefits:

• Make sure that all of your social networks remain “active”.
• Ensure that all of your accounts seem to be “alive” to fans as well as followers. If social network users see that a company’s accounts haven’t been posted on in a while, these people are likely to stop paying attention to users who are perceived as “dead” or, alternatively, inactive.  Posting frequent updates to all of your social media accounts will ensure they stay “alive” and relevant in viewers’ eyes.
• In addition, cross-posting the same content on several social network platforms will help you to save a lot of time.  Posting the same material in multiple locations will cut down a lot on the time that you spend online searching for things to share as well as creating new content.
• Cons of Cross-Posting
• Notwithstanding some of the big “pros” of cross-posting, the method does have some drawbacks:
• One of the biggest drawbacks is that various social networks are optimised for different types of content. An update which will draw lots of attention on Twitter will not get the same type of feedback - or gain the same amount of traction - on Facebook. More specialised networks such as Instagram and Pinterest will not even contain the same types of content as your Twitter feed.  Posting the same items to various networks indicates that you aren’t utilising each distinctive network to its fullest potential.
• In addition, by posting identical content on various platforms, your loyal fans who follow you on various social networks may feel that they are being cheated or will not be as invested in your content as opposed to if you posted different things on each network. If you do this, you will get the benefit of giving your most loyal fans a variety of content to interact with. As well, you will see your post engagement rate benefit.

If you are worried about the harmful impact of cross-posting content, it is possible for you to use cross-promotion as an alternative. Cross-promotion makes use of one piece of content that is posted to one or two digital social media platforms. This content is then promoted across other channels.

This tactic means that you are not spamming the same bit of content across multiple networks. However, what you are doing is making all of your followers aware of the content. Care must still be taken to tailor your message to the audience on each social platform. It can be a very practical approach and avoids some of the negative aspects of cross-posting content.