A friend of mine who owns his
own business recently told me that he likes Instagram because he can post from
Instagram to Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare at the same time.
Totally cringe-worthy. This
means that he is sharing the exact same content to all of his followers
regardless of network or audience.
Every platform is unique
Each social network has its own
purpose, and is different enough from the others to offer something special. By
blasting the same message across all platforms, you are not taking advantage of
the unique offerings of each platform.
Why is your company on
Facebook, Twitter, or other social networks? You want to share valuable
content.
If you share content on more
than one social media network, why are you on each of them? Why do your
followers choose to follow you on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest? If you’re sharing the same content on each platform,
then why should one person follow you on all three?
There are different reasons for
each platform, and this depends on the way information is shared, the audience
type, and it’s purpose. When we develop content for our audiences, we have to
decide which network will best service that content.
Reasons not to cross-post
The main problem with posting
the same exact message at the same exact time, is that you’re not making the
message special for an individual network. And frankly, it makes you look lazy.
Everyone who follows you on two
or more of your social networks is likely to see that one message across all of
them. Who wants to see the same thing twice?
Amy Donohue also sees
cross-posting as a bad idea. In Fab Amy's Blog she writes:
“Twitter is for information
sharing and engagement one-on-one. You don’t get the thread you get on
Facebook.”
Let’s say you want your
community members to interact with each other, and build off of each other’s
ideas.
Facebook and Instagram are good
for this because of the way they show threads. Others can easily see, and
respond to comments in a single thread.
You can try to do this with Twitter, but some people won’t include
everyone’s Twitter handles in their replies, making it difficult for others to
see their comments. You are also limited by character count.
Reasons to cross-post
Cross-posting saves time.
Rather than reposting a message
everywhere, with a couple clicks, just broadcast the same message to all your
platforms at once. Voila! Your afternoon social media message is posted to all
your sites. Saving time is good. But don’t do it at the expense of a
well-planned strategy.
A valid reason to cross-post is
to get followers who follow you on one site to also follow you on another. By
posting from Pinterest to Twitter, your Twitter followers will see the link to
your pin, and may decide to follow you on Pinterest in addition to Twitter.
By gaining more followers on
another network, you are adding to the times that this one person is seeing
your messages, and keeping you on the top of their mind. Someone may not react
to something you tweet, but will react to a pin.
Social media consultant Sean Gardner benefits from cross-posting. He likes posting links
to his Google+ page from Twitter. He’s gained a lot of new followers on Google+
by cross-posting this way.
In Two Great Ways to Cross-Post in Social Media, Sean points out that he’s
been told not to cross-post the same content on different platforms because
they all have different personalities. He says that’s why you should cross-post.
As you can see, there are
reasons for and against cross-posting. I still think it’s a bad idea, but maybe
you think differently. Do you cross-post? Why or why not?
This was originally published
on the Social Media Clubhouse Blog.
