12 Aug Do’s and Don’ts of Cross-Promotion on Social Media

Quality content creation is key in any business’s social presence and strategy. No matter your brand’s goal—whether it is growth, retention, or anything in between, it is imperative to optimize your content to make sure it’s being utilized most effectively to reach those goals. One of the best and most successful ways to do this is cross-promotion.  

What is Cross-Promotion?  

Not to be mistaken with cross-posting, cross-promotion is using a central content piece and tailoring it to the appropriate channels for it to run most efficiently on that channel. It is not copying & pasting into multiple different feeds with no editing.  

So why should a brand use cross-promoting? To put it simply, nobody has enough time to create unlimited content and your best messages will likely resonate on more than one social channel. But just sharing the same content to multiple networks via cross-posting is likely costing you impressions, engagements, shares, and perhaps even sales.  

Getting Started 

If your brand is wanting to start cross-promoting its content, it is important to have knowledge of the basic do’s and don’ts.  

Let’s start with the DON’TS:  

• Don’t post the same content piece across several different channels at the same time/day. Instead, stagger posts to different days and using analytics, post at an optimal time of day. For example, if you work on a food brand and have a content piece surrounding breakfast, post it in the morning hours when your audience is waking up and “breakfast” is top of mind.

• Don’t post unedited text from one channel to another. Be mindful of the individual platform the user is on and make sure your messaging aligns with the platform’s design. Try your best to write fresh copy for each platform knowing the character limits in place for each one. The same story should be told much differently in 280 characters (twitter) vs. 2,200 characters (Instagram).  

• Don’t post every piece of content to every social channel your brand is on. Be selective and it most cases, the rule of “quality of quantity” wins out. Each social platform is unique and while certain pieces of content tailored to one can be repurposed appropriately, other times it won’t translate and that’s okay. Choose which networks make sense for each message based on your channel strategy and for a refresher on types of content that work best for each social channel, check out our blogs on snapchat, reels, and linkedin.  

• Don’t use hashtags on Facebook. They don’t provide any measurable improvement in reach or engagement, although they can help on Twitter and Instagram. 

Now for some examples of things you can DO to optimize cross-promoting:  

• Do adjust your content to fit each individual platform. Resize images to fit the platform’s criteria and like we mentioned early (but it’s worth repeating) tailor your copy so it makes sense for the platform it’s running on. (ie using “share” vs “retweet” or “private message” vs “direct message”). Make sure your wording aligns with what the specific platform’s jargon is. If you’re tagging other handles/brands/users, be sure to check for each platform as usernames can vary between channels, you want to be sure you’re linking to an active and correct account.  

• Do use custom URLs or UTM codes for tracking especially if you’re driving to a website. This will give you much more detailed insights on which campaigns worked most efficiently on which channels and will improve your long-term cross-promoting strategy. Regularly analyze this data to see which types of content resonate the most on which networks and adjust your content creation accordingly.  

• Use your most powerful social network presence to promote social events on other channels (but only when it makes sense). This can be an effective way to generate more users on a growing channel however use this tactic sparingly.  

The Future of Brand’s Content Creation  

Perfecting your brand’s content cross-promoting abilities now is more important than ever as social continues to dominate in any major brand’s strategy for brand recognition and sales. According to Social Media Today, over 90% of Instagram users follow at least one business account. More than ever, users are engaging and interacting with businesses on social and brands must take advantage of that by curating content tailor-made to their audience, and even more specifically, to their different audiences on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on. As we’ve seen with Tik Tok’s shift to encourage brands to be part of their channel and Instagram’s major shift in their user experience strategy, it is also crucial brands pay close attention to the ever-changing social nuances and adapt their content quickly and effectively.  

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