4 Benefits (and 4 Drawbacks) of Social Media Cross-Posting

Cross-posting on social media is simply taking the same message or information and sharing it across multiple social media platforms. While this may sound simple enough for you to do as part of your marketing strategy as a managed service provider, there are certain things we recommend you do to make it as effective as possible—as well as certain things we strongly advise you not to do.

Let’s start with how cross-posting is technically defined.

Depending On Who You Ask, Cross-Posting Means Different Things

Some people view cross-posting as taking the same content and duplicating it across different platforms, while others consider that a different term: multiposting. These others define cross-posting as simply using the same theme and adjusting their content according to the platform it is being shared to without changing the underlying message.

Those who subscribe to our Social Media as a Service offering may notice that we combine these two philosophies, both cross-posting and cross/multi-posting depending on the subject and content of the post. This is largely because different platforms are commonly used differently, and the people using them expect a certain experience as compared to another platform. However, we have also seen the benefits that a consistent message can provide.

Regardless of the approach you take, it is important that you do so with a full consideration of how today’s social media platforms operate… but I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we get into that, let’s go through some of the pros and cons of cross-posting, presuming that you’re sticking to the “same content” definition.

What are the Positives of Cross-Posting Social Media Content?

Here are some of the ways that cross-posting your social media content can work in your favor.

You Potentially Get Your Content in Front of More Eyes

Let’s say you have two prospects—let’s call them Betty and Al—that you’re particularly interested in converting, and both of them have shown to be particularly interested in a certain benefit that your services offer. However, if Betty only uses LinkedIn and Al has gone all in on X, you miss them both if you only share that benefit on your business’ Facebook page. Cross-posting helps eliminate that problem.

It’s Easier to Remain Active on All Your Social Media

Using social media as a business marketing tool is hard work… and the more social media profiles you have and the more active you try to be on each, the harder it gets to keep up with all of them. Cross-posting (especially if you use it to share information about your most popular and requested services) helps by taking the pressure to come up with unique posts off, letting you focus more on promoting those other services that have a bit less organic demand and awareness. Plus, social media platforms seem to reward consistency, which cross-posting helps you maintain.

There’s a Lot of Potential Time Saved

I want to ask you a question (and forgive me if I seem forward): do you—or the team member you’ve given the responsibility to—really have the time to sit on your social media and come up with a unique post each day, or even every month, if you’re using a social media management platform?

Cross-posting helps you expedite the time that needs to be spent coming up with at least a few of these social media posts, allowing you to accomplish other important tasks with the time you save.

You Can Encourage Engagement More Often

As you create the social media posts that you plan to cross-post across different platforms and profiles, you have the opportunity to take a little more time to make them as engaging as possible. With a more considered and effective call-to-action shared in more places, you optimize your chances of engaging your audience.

What are the Negatives of Cross-Posting Social Media Content?

There are a few pitfalls to consider when cross-posting to your business’ social media profiles.

It Can Look Artificial

How often have you felt seen—that your unique concerns and considerations were focused on specifically—when you’ve been reading a form letter? If you aren’t careful to inject some personality into everything you’re cross-posting, you can push your audience away. This makes it critical that you put extra focus into making your cross-posted content as human as possible.

Different Formats and Post Conventions Can Interfere

The different social media platforms out there tend to operate very differently from one another, to the point where it’s fairly easy to tell which platform a post was originally intended for… which makes it all the more important that any cross-posting is done with care. Consider how odd it would look to see a Facebook post with a dozen or more hashtags at the end of the content. Meanwhile, on Instagram, that many hashtags are frequently the norm.

The same goes for tagging people or places. Different social handles easily break the association with a brand or person… If John Q. Public had the username @JohnnyPubs on X but went by @QthePublic on Instagram, crossposting a post that tags John Q. Public is going to end up breaking the tags any place it doesn’t exactly match.

Plus, different social media networks frequently call for a different tone of voice to be used in their posts. Facebook is often seen far more casually than LinkedIn, for instance, so a conversational tone that might work perfectly well on Facebook could be seen as unprofessional on LinkedIn. While this isn’t an insurmountable obstacle, it can create some challenges and take extra work to avoid.

It’s Easy to Mistime a Post

If you were to guess what day was the most effective day to share something on Instagram, what would you presume to be the answer? What if I wanted a Facebook post to get a lot of visibility… what time of day would be best to post it? Or, if I wanted the most clicks on my Facebook post, when would the best time to post be then?

The answers to these questions (Tuesday, 9 AM, and 3 PM) all vary, and as you might expect, there is no one singular time where the social media feeds all align to bless content with the most engagement or the most click-throughs. Therefore, by cross-posting to all your platforms simultaneously, you’re effectively sacrificing the efficacy of the many for the sake of one platform’s performance. 

Overdoing It Can Overwhelm Your Audience

On a related note, different social media platforms are best utilized with certain numbers of updates each day. Specifically, LinkedIn and Facebook are more commonly used once a day or so, while Instagram and X commonly see multiple posts a day. With cross-posting in play, you could easily share more than most users will ultimately see, allowing a lot of your messaging to be lost, or for your brand to start actually irritating users and turning them away.

We Help Make Dealing with Your MSP’s Social Media Far Easier

We mentioned our Social Media as a Service earlier, and we’d like to invite you to learn more about it and its benefits. Reach out to us at 888-546-4384 to learn more today!