7 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Cross-Post On Social Media

If you’ve ever attended one of my workshops, you know one of the things I talk about is the use of cross-posting on social media. I get it, creating content already takes up so much time, it feels like you should be able to take the easy route and share across all platforms at once. But I caution you against taking the easy path when it comes to your business profiles.

Because you’re in competition online with all of the other businesses offering the same product or services—so it’s crucial to leverage the unique features of each platform to maximize engagement and reach for your business!

In this blog post, we'll explore seven reasons why you should avoid cross-posting and instead tailor your content for each platform individually.

1. Platform-Specific Algorithms:

Creating content specific to each platform goes a long way to making a huge impact on your algorithms! Instagram and Facebook have algorithms that prioritize content differently, these algorithms change on a regular basis so what was working last year may not be working anymore! (Heck, what was working last month or week may be outdated!)

By cross-posting, you risk compromising the visibility and reach of your posts on both platforms. Crafting platform-specific content ensures you can optimize your posts to meet each algorithm's requirements and increase your chances of reaching a larger audience.

2. Visual and Textual Differences:

Instagram is primarily a visual platform, while Facebook allows for longer, more text-based content and the ability to share articles. By cross-posting without modification, you may end up with truncated captions on Instagram or missing visuals on Facebook, resulting in a disjointed and less engaging experience for your audience.

I often see graphics that are cut off or simply don’t look appropriate from one platform to another. With programs such as Canva that make it easy to readjust the graphic sizes, there is no excuse to have graphics that aren’t made specifically for each platform that you are posting on.

3. Unique User Demographics:

Instagram and Facebook attract different demographics and user behaviours. Instagram has a younger audience while Facebook attracts an older audience, which means that you need to be crafting separate content for each platform’s audience.

You effectively have the ability to target your specific audience on each platform and tailor your messaging to their preferences, which in the end, should increase your reach and engagement.

This approach enables you to connect more authentically, have a better success rate and overall increase your engagement.

4. Varying Content Preferences:

Instagram and Facebook users have very different content preferences.

Instagram users tend to appreciate highly curated and aesthetically pleasing visuals, while Facebook users tend to engage more with relatable and informative content.

By cross-posting directly between platforms, you may miss the mark and fail to resonate with your intended audience

5. Engagement and Interaction:

Another difference between different platforms is the engagement features. Instagram and Facebook differ significantly. Instagram puts a priority on likes, comments, and hashtags, while Facebook offers a range of interactive features such as polls, events, and groups.

By tailoring your content to each platform, you can leverage these unique features to boost engagement and encourage meaningful interactions with your audience.

6. Misuse of Hashtag:

Using hashtags effectively is crucial for increasing discoverability and reach on Instagram. However, hashtags don't perform the same way on Facebook.

By cross-posting from Instagram to Facebook, your carefully selected hashtags may lose their relevance or effectiveness, limiting your post's visibility and reach on Facebook.

How often have you seen #Instagram #CatsOfInstagram or a post such as “Yay we have reached 10,000 followers” cross-posted to Facebook and when you look they have 500 followers and well #CatsOfInstagram tells your Facebook followers that you didn’t really put the effort into this post for them but you simply hit the share button?

7. Brand Consistency and Messaging:

Maintaining consistent branding and messaging across platforms is essential to a company, brand or personal brand’s success, but blindly cross-posting can undermine this effort and make you look unprofessional.

Each platform has its own tone, voice, and style, and by adapting your content accordingly, you can ensure your brand resonates better with the respective audience on each platform.

It's important to recognize the unique strengths and characteristics of each social media platform. By avoiding direct cross-posting from Instagram to Facebook (or vice versa), you can optimize your content for each platform's algorithms, engage with specific user demographics effectively, and maintain a consistent brand presence across all your social media channels. Invest the time and effort to create platform-specific content, and you'll see improved engagement, reach, and overall social media success.

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