The data is all wrong… there is no single best social network to post your content on. It doesn't matter what industry you are in or that certain platforms have more total users or higher engagement per user.
What matters is that you created valuable content and you want that content to generate as many views and as much engagement as possible. So why would you limit yourself to only sharing it on one social network?
The truth is, in today's social media landscape, the major platforms have become more similar than different. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit - they all now support a wide variety of content formats like images, videos, stories, carousels, live streams, and long-form text posts. The lines have blurred.
Cross-Posting is Easier Than Ever
In the early days of social media, sharing content across multiple platforms was tedious. You had to download your image or video manually, log into each account separately, reformat the post to match that platform's requirements, find the best time to post fo, and share it natively.
But today, most social media management tools allow you to compose a single post and share it instantly to all your linked profiles with just a few clicks. The tools automatically optimize the post format and specs for each network. This makes cross-posting your content incredibly quick and easy.
Some argue that you should tailor your message uniquely for the audience on each platform. And while this can help in certain cases, it's becoming less critical as the demographics overlap more and more between the different social networks.
Expand Your Reach Without Extra Effort
The single biggest reason to post your content across all social channels is to maximize your potential reach and social media engagement. Even if you have a bigger following on one platform, you likely have different audiences on each network that would never see your post if you didn't share it there as well.
For example, imagine you have:
- 10,000 followers on Instagram
- 5,000 on Facebook
- 1,000 on Twitter
- 500 on LinkedIn
If you only post a new video on Instagram, you'd be ignoring the 6,500 people that follow you elsewhere. You worked hard to build a community on those other platforms, so why not share your great content with them too?
Crossposting allows you to get more value out of each piece of content you create, without investing additional time and effort. You're not making separate content for each platform, just sharing the same post more widely. The ROI is clear.
Optimize for Each Platform's Algorithm
Now, this doesn't mean you should just blast identical posts to every network without any thought. It's still important to understand how each platform's algorithm works and optimize your posts accordingly.
For example:
- Twitter favors posts with high engagement in the first 30 minutes
- Instagram priorities posts with more likes, comments, shares and saves
- LinkedIn boosts posts that drive conversation among connections
- TikTok serves trending content to more users
So while you can use the same core creative assets, you may want to tweak elements like the caption, hashtags, post timing, etc. based on the best practices for each network. Many social media tools will provide recommendations to optimize your post as you compose it.
Avoid Audience Fatigue
One common argument against cross-posting is that if someone follows you on multiple platforms, they'll get annoyed seeing the same post multiple times. But there are a few reasons this generally isn't an issue:
- The average person has 8.4 social media accounts, but they don't use them all equally. So even if someone follows you in multiple places, they likely won't see every post on every platform.
- Social media algorithms filter out content they think users won't engage with. So if someone already engaged with your post on their primary platform, the algorithms likely won't show it to them again on other networks if they are connected like Instagram and Facebook.
- You can stagger your posting times across platforms. Rather than publishing everywhere simultaneously, schedule them at the ideal time for each platform so they're not all clustered together.
- It's unlikely your superfans who follow you everywhere will complain about seeing your content multiple times. They clearly enjoy your work! It's new potential followers that you want to reach.
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
Now, this advice comes with one big caveat - your content has to be good! If you're sharing low-quality, spammy, or overly promotional content, posting it in more places will only hurt your reputation and reach.
Focus first on creating genuinely valuable, interesting, and engaging content for your target audience. Put real effort into planning, research, production, and editing. If you're confident your post will perform well, then by all means share it far and wide!
But if you have doubts about the quality, hold off. A bad post can lead to unfollows, hides, and lower engagement rates over time. Be selective and only post your best work.
Track Your Performance
As with any social media strategy, it's important to analyze your results and adapt your approach over time. Most social media reporting tools allow you to track key metrics like impressions, engagement rate, click-through rate, and follower growth for each platform side-by-side.
Look for trends like:
- Which platform drives the most engagement for different content types?
- What times of day and days of the week perform best on each network?
- How do your results compare to your industry benchmarks?
Use these insights to continuously optimize your cross-posting and content repurposing strategy, while still maintaining a strong presence across all relevant channels. The algorithms and audience preferences change frequently, so view it as an ongoing process.
Conclusion
In the end, limiting your content distribution to a single platform is a missed opportunity. While there are some unique considerations for each social network, the benefits of cross-posting far outweigh the minimal extra effort required.
By maintaining active profiles and sharing your best content across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more, you'll grow your brand's overall social media reach and engagement.
Tools like StoryChief make it simple to optimize your posts for each channel.
Remember, your audience is likely spread across multiple platforms - so be wherever they are! Meet them with quality content, interact genuinely, and provide value. That's the key to building a thriving social media community, no matter which platform is currently in the spotlight.
To discuss how better social media marketing can transform your marketing performance, request a demo or start your free StoryChief trial (a content marketer’s secret weapon!). Our team would be happy to give you a walkthrough.
