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Streamlining Your Social Media Efforts: A Guide to Cross-Posting

January 13, 2023
cross posting

Do you sometimes feel that you’re getting buried under the amount of content required for all the different social media networks? Feel like you’re suffocating? Wondering if you’re nailing your social media strategy? Stop generating unique content for every platform and repurpose what you already own! Welcome to the world of cross-posting.

What Is Cross-Posting?

Cross-posting is the process of taking a piece of content and posting it across multiple, different social media platforms, websites or networks at the same time. Many people choose to complete this process manually, simply copying and pasting the written content and using the same images. Others choose to automate this process using online tools, typically those that are running multiple accounts across multiple businesses, or those that simply want to be efficient with their time.

Why You Should Be Cross-Posting on Social Media

If you’re putting the effort into crafting a great piece of content, chances are it will also do really well when you post it on another social media platform alongside your native platform of choice. Let’s say that you create a, frankly, hilarious TikTok of you and your co-workers. You know it’ll do well on TikTok, but it could do just as well on Instagram or Facebook.

Expand Your Reach

Different social media platforms have different audiences, those that browse Instagram don’t necessarily browse TikTok. Simply by posting across multiple platforms you’re giving your content the chance to reach a wider selection of people. This in turn expands your audience as when people relate and engage with your content they might choose to follow your account and engage with your brand. Now that always looks good for the social media KPIs.

Save Lots of Time

We mentioned above that many people complete this process manually. If that’s you, please stop. See the section below “Can You Use Automation Tools to Cross-Post on Social Media?” to save yourself lots of time. That said, even if you are manually cross-posting, you’re still saving yourself time when compared to creating unique content, individually for each network.

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Cross-Posting Best Practices

Cross-posting seems straightforward, simply copy, paste, post, and you’re done. It is, however, not quite as simple as that. Instead, you should be following these cross-posting best practices. Keep these in mind when you’re cross-posting and you’ll be getting the most out of it before you know it.

Be Mindful of Each Platform’s Content Format

It’s pretty clear that each platform has a different set of standard content formats. TikTok, for instance, works best with simple vertical videos, Facebook tends to use landscape images or videos within news feeds (except for stories and reels), and Pinterest often uses portrait images. It’s true that you should pay attention to the actual formatting of the content but also bear in mind the audience. 

Just because you can cross-post doesn’t mean that you always should. If you’ve created a tongue-in-cheek video on TikTok, it might not be the best video to share on your company’s LinkedIn page. It does, of course, come down to brand messaging and voice, but you should always be mindful of each platform’s core audience.

Consider Platform Rules Regarding Links

Some platforms allow you to embed links within the content and that doesn’t necessarily count towards any sort of character limit, however others, Twitter for instance, stick to 280-character limits including links. Another example is Instagram, they don’t allow clickable links to be put within descriptions but you can add them within profile bios.

Create Content That Aligns Across Social Media Platforms

We hinted at it above regarding formatting, but it makes sense to leverage similar media and formatting types across platforms. If you’re great at creating Instagram Reels then you’re already producing TikTok content. Yes, there might be slight differences in the audience and what they expect, but you’ll certainly be able to post them on both platforms without any issues.

You will, however, need to consider the way that the copy related to a media post is added to each platform. Instagram allows you to add lengthy, detailed captions, and TikTok likes to keep them short and sweet. 

Schedule Your Posts

Now that you’re planning to get cross-posting, it’s worth using a tool to schedule posts in advance of them going live. This saves you time, allows you to queue posts at once while you’re in a publishing zone, and means you can schedule posts across multiple platforms from the same tool. Plus, you’re able to pick the best time to post across platforms. This automation sounds great, doesn’t it? That brings us to the next point.

Having trouble scheduling you cross-posts? Let Publer help!

how to get more likes on tiktok

Can You Use Automation Tools to Cross-Post on Social Media?

Quick answer, yes. Using an automation tool to cross-post on social media isn’t something that you should consider using, it’s something you absolutely should be using. The best tools help you to arrange formats accordingly per network, meaning you can quickly and easily publish across lots of platforms, or schedule at a time that suits you and your followers.

There are lots of options out there to help you cross-post on social media, but there’s one tool that stands apart from the rest.

How to Easily Cross-Post Using Publer

Join Publer

Publer aims to make your working process as smooth and as fast as possible. We’ve created 4 different ways of cross-posting: Scheduling, AutoScheduling, Recycling, and Recurring.

Schedule

Probably the easiest way for you to schedule a post to automatically publish. Schedule allows you to select which social media account you want to post to, curate the post, the simply pick when you want it to post.

AutoSchedule

Autoschedule accomplishes the same thing as Schedule, but in this instance, you select a predetermined and dedicated time slot for each social account. Then when you schedule a post it is automatically assigned to this time slot.

Recycle

This is a brilliant feature if you’re happy to use the same post multiple times and are short on content at that point in time. Publer allows you to set settings that automatically re-post old content, including only automatically reposting if you haven’t scheduled any new posts. You’re also able to set limits to how often a post can be reposted.

Recurring

For posts that you want to regularly get posted on your social accounts, use the Recurring post type. You set the recurrent schedule and Publer will post it for you.

Key Takeaways

Cross-posting is not just a great time saver, but it’s also a clever use of your resources, meaning that you’re tackling your social media accounts in the most efficient and effective way possible. Plus you’ll have the added bonus of expanding your audience and connecting with new potential consumers.

  • Consider if the content you’re planning to cross-post genuinely works on the new platform.
  • Just because you can cross-post doesn’t mean you have to, it might take a bit more work but sometimes slightly editing the content can make all the difference to the audience.

Ready to make your cross-posting process considerably better? Give Publer a try for free today!

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