By Samantha Litfin | Marketing Manager
If you don’t know it already, social media is a powerful marketing tool, but many people don’t know how to harness it. There are obvious benefits to being across multiple platforms, e.g. SEO, perceived reach, etc. Plus, with Google and Bing constantly working on integrating social into their search results, social media is becoming a voice that people just cannot ignore. The key, however, is to use these extremely popular platforms effectively.
In this instance, we are going to look specifically at Twitter.
If an organisation is using Twitter the same way it utilises Facebook, they may be experiencing little to no success through the platform. Cross-posting, i.e. posting the same content across multiple social networks – is something that divides a lot of marketers. While it might seem easy and harmless at first, however, the platform specific features and negative perception from users of both platforms should make you take pause.
Firstly, each social media platform is built with specific features that tend to be unique to them, no matter whether another had decided to adopt them to keep pace. A perfect example of this is the hashtag (#) and @reply. While it is perfectly normal for people to use hashtags and @reply tagging across Twitter (even Instagram), use of these features on Facebook doesn’t attract an audience, can be aesthetically damaging to your post and can show a lack of understanding of the platform.
Negative perception is probably the biggest issue cross-posting promotes, you may think that being “active” on every platform gains you greater reach and offers a bigger audience for your messaging, however, true users on each platform will not be impressed (borderline offended) and will potentially classify you as lazy. If you genuinely care about your fans and followers, taking the extra 5-10 seconds to tailor your message to each platform and your audience, can make a huge difference in your success.
There is also the issue of cross-posting specific instructions, i.e. if you use Facebook and you see a post with “favourite and retweet” in the copy, you can immediately tell where the post is aimed and it is not at Facebook – this slight can be enough to make people hide your posts in their feeds, or worse, unlike your page. It is important to remember that there are platform-specific calls to action and features that are just not relevant across other networks.
Below are great examples of how you can cross-promote over different social media platforms, whilst keeping your message specifically tailored to each platform and its users.
Twitter:
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
There are so many now – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, WeChat, Snap Chat, WhatsApp, Tumblr, YouTube, the list goes on. The reality is, you don’t need to be on every platform. What is more important than being across them all, is finding where your patrons, members, clients or potential target market are, and then being exceptionally good at the one, two or three platforms that count, to ensure you completely and genuinely engage with your market.
It’s not about the quantity of posts you publish from network to network, it’s the quality! Instead of cross-posting, why not try cross-promoting instead. Cross-promoting is the art of using one piece of core content modified uniquely for each different platform. This approach means you are not spamming the same piece of content across multiple networks, while still making all of your followers aware of the content you want to share.
If you are thinking of taking stock of your current social media platforms and how successful they are for your organisation, why not give us a call – we can perform a social audit for you, giving you the information you need to make a sound judgment on just how effective these time-consuming platforms are to the success of your business. Contact Samantha Litfin on (07) 3878 9355 today!
