Creating content for more than one social media account can demand a lot of your time and energy. Between the brainstorming, the need for consistency, and the work that goes into executing an idea, it can be easy to burn out very quickly. Setting boundaries, taking breaks, and rethinking what you prioritize can help—but what if there was a way to use the same content to fit several platforms at once? Let’s talk about cross-posting.
What Is Cross-Posting?
Cross-posting is strategically sharing the same content on more than one social media platform. It is a great way to save time, and it can help you reach more of your audience at once—but the keyword here is “strategically.” There are a few things to consider before sharing a piece of content across multiple platforms.
1. Will this content be useful or entertaining to my audiences on all platforms?
2. Is this formatted correctly for the platforms I’m posting on?
3. Could this potentially hurt my growth on social media?
When it comes to assessing useful or entertaining content, think about your audiences for the different accounts that you run. (Having a business or creator account, on platforms that offer them, can help you track this data.) Do you have more Gen Z followers on TikTok and more millennials on Instagram? Maybe your followers on one platform are most interested in entertainment content and on another they engage more with industry updates and news. If this is the case, you may want to think twice about which content to cross-post. If you have relevant updates to share with both audiences, feel free to post them across platforms. And if you find that your different audiences engage with similar content, that is also a great opportunity to cross-post. But if you think one audience will be less interested in a piece of content, then it may be best not to post it on that platform.
Think About Formatting
Now that you have established your content will be helpful to multiple audiences, you need to make sure that it’s formatted correctly, so that when you cross-post, your post looks uniform with the other content on that site. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- For text posts: What is the character count? Will this content fit within the limits of each platform?
- For images: Will the size of this image fit correctly on each platform? Will I need to crop the image?
- If I am posting several pictures, how will they appear to my audience across platforms? In a carousel (like Instagram) or a grid (like Twitter)? Will that affect how I create captions? Should I prompt my followers to swipe or scroll to see more?
- If the content is a video, is it filmed horizontally or vertically? Will that format look right on all the platforms where I’m planning to post it?
- Will the video feature a watermark from another app? Many social media algorithms will deprioritize content that shows a visible watermark from another app. There are several apps, such as app, that can remove watermarks for you.
It also may be helpful to think of how each platform handles things like links, tagging, and hashtags. Some platforms, like Instagram, don’t allow links in captions, so you may want to edit the post to point people toward a link in your bio. If you plan to tag someone else in the post, make sure they have an account on each of the platforms where you are sharing it.
A variety of apps can do the work for you when it comes to cross-posting. Buffer is a great tool for this, and it allows users to schedule posts as well. Facebook and Instagram have automatic cross-posting if you link your accounts. This can save you a lot of stress about formatting. But if you worry about how these tools will format your content, you can always manually post to each platform. And if you spot any mistakes, don’t forget that many platforms allow you to edit posts after they have been published.
Consider Your Audience
Finally, think about how cross-posting might affect your growth online. A major benefit of using original content for each social channel is that it will encourage people to follow you on more than one platform. The people who do follow you on more than one platform could become frustrated at seeing the same content more than once, which could lead to a decline in engagement. It’s also good to keep in mind that sharing only recycled content can hurt how you appear in a website’s algorithm or, in very extreme cases, get your account suspended for spam. All this is just to say that it’s important to be thoughtful and deliberate about how often and what you decide to repost. If you have concerns about cross-posting, rest assured that there are many, many other ways to be super-efficient with your social platforms.