Essential cross-posting tips for small businesses

What’s that?

You just launched a brand-new clothing line, and have a post ready to announce it? Great!

Whip out that quirky headline! Sprinkle in some catchy visuals! Broadcast on every social media channel possible!

For those just setting up shop, cross-posting content sounds tempting, doesn’t it? And, by all means, it should.

After all, you’re just starting out. You haven’t chalked out your social media marketing expenses yet. You have an intern who’s perplexed by the sheer number of bobbleheads you have on your desk. And, lest we forget, the amount of work required to actually build the very product that drives your online presence.

Of course you’re wearing multiple hats, and of course, you’re strapped for time, but getting the word out about your new business on social media is vitally important.

In order to save time, you turn to outlets that give you an easy way out—taking a single piece of content and firing it across all your social channels.

Now, this method isn’t entirely wrong, but there are better and more efficient ways of going about this. If we’re doing this, let’s do it like a pro, shall we?

Here’s some food for thought to start you off:

In the vast sea of social media, have you found your social anchor?

While Facebook, Twitter, and all those other networks are vying for your attention, it’s important to remember that they’re just standalone, self-sufficient platforms with different personalities. Get this: your business doesn’t necessarily have to be present on every one of them.

What can you do instead?

Find your brand’s social grounding. Understand where your target audience spends most of their time.

When you blast content out in hopes of reaching everybody, you won’t really reach anybody. So, before you invest more resources into your marketing efforts, familiarize yourself with the etiquette of each network.

Whether you’re looking to create that perfect tweet, make your way around Snapchat, or get your Instagram mojo on—identify the social channels that work best for you and align well with your business’s objectives.

Awesome. Now that we’ve got this out of the way, it’s time to dive deeper.

Tailor, tinker, tweak

Nah, not your garments—your posts!

Once you’ve figured out which networks are right for your brand, it’s time to flex those creative writing muscles.

Using multiple hashtags on Instagram to make your brand discoverable is a common practice, and if done right, can help you earn brownie points.

But what about on Facebook? (I’m vehemently nodding my head in dismay.)

Remember the part where I said social networks having different personas? Work with that. It’s absolutely fine if the crux of your posts use the same theme across networks, but what’s more important is that you:

• Customize the tone of your message,
• Design visuals that fit the network’s dimension criteria,
• Use emojis and hashtags judiciously,
• Double check handles before tagging, as they’ll differ across platforms, and
• Craft high-quality, unique pieces of content specific to every channel.

For instance, posting pictures of models wearing your latest clothes might be appropriate for Instagram, but on LinkedIn? Mmm… I think you just earned yourself your first red flag.

Another point to note here is that your audience may have already liked your latest post on a particular network, and for them to see the same messaging across all the other channels, can be quite underwhelming.

Solution? Tweak and repackage your posts in a way that suits the language of each social platform. Give your audience a breath of fresh content to inhale.

To help simplify your marketing efforts, look for a social tool that can help you with this. The internet is a wonderful place, and there’s a myriad smart software out there. I generally prefer to use this tiny, nifty browser plugin that lets me tailor content based on what’s relevant to my audience.

So, go forth and find your favorite! Otherwise, you’ll just end up sounding like a broken record saying the same thing over and over, frustrating your followers in the process.

Keep an eye on your hits

Managed to get personalized content out? Bravo! But, hold on—let’s backtrack a bit.

You’ve fine-tuned your marketing copy, targeted the right audience, and created specific images to suit different platforms. Did we miss out on something?

Links!

In order to understand which sources are generating the maximum engagement for your brand, and where your post hits are coming from—creating customized URLs will do the trick. Moreover, these unique links can also help you understand the type of posts that aren’t getting you enough engagement or traction. Learn the origin of your clicks and reimagine your marketing strategies to put your best foot forward.

You don’t want your social media publishing efforts to be in vain, especially when there are so many options out there for you to easily track your click-through rates and analyze the health of your brand.

Give your audience a break

Relationship building 101: give people their deserved space. Social media, as vast and powerful as it is, can also tend to be suffocating. With so many new businesses emerging every year, competing to make their presence known online, the deluge of content will only continue to increase.

In your attempts to develop strong connections with your audience, don’t forget to maintain a healthy distance.

Create a consistent posting schedule where you can spread your content out across days. Have an article ready to be published? Mark 10 a.m. on your calendar. Got something new to share? Noon, it is! Let your audience consume your content in doses—respect their time and give them enough space to digest it.

Bombarding your followers with updates will only desensitize them to your brand. They’ll soon be scrolling past your feed, consciously or unconsciously.

So, go out, grab some coffee, take a breather, and come back. This method of spacing and timing your posts is a simple, yet valuable hack for building trust and loyalty with your followers. You can’t go wrong with this.

Final thoughts…

Humanize your brand’s communication. Publishing the same message across channels will make you sound disingenuous, spammy, and could potentially hurt the credibility of your company. Aim to cross-post effectively, and not cross-pollute.

Even if you’re brand-new and lacking the necessary resources to build a positive presence, hold on for a while and work on a bigger plan. Sometimes it’s best not to post anything at all—until you’ve got something substantial that’ll grab eyeballs in an instant.

Good luck, and see you next time!