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Managing multiple social media accounts is a tricky balancing act. On one hand, you have to engage with different audiences using different types of media—videos, links to blog posts, images and infographics, and more. On the other hand, you have to find ways to satisfy the different algorithms that each platform uses. Many companies are simultaneously trying to maintain and increase engagement on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
An easy shortcut would be to post on all social media at once. There are plenty of tools that allow you to cross-publish one post across all your profiles with just one click. However, that might not be the best idea. Let’s dive deeper into how social media cross-posting works and the best way to use it for your business.
Should I post on all social media at once?
First, let’s start with the basics: how often should you post on social media in general?
Most experts agree that publishing roughly 11 posts across all your social media accounts each day is the sweet spot. However, it’s a little more complicated than that. Each platform has a different optimal number of posts per week. Too many, and the algorithm may stop sharing your content. Too few, and you may get lost in users’ crowded feeds.
Different data analyses show the following guidelines work best for each social media platform.
- Twitter: three to four tweets per day
- Facebook: one to two posts per day
- Instagram: three to five posts per week, plus up to two Stories per day
- LinkedIn: one to two posts per day
As you can see, this means you’re posting between eight to 13 times each day.
Sure, you can post on all social media all at once. Adding another layer of complexity, however, is the fact that each social media network has different optimal posting times. For instance, people tend to use sites like Instagram in the morning and evenings—perhaps when they’re commuting to work. But, LinkedIn sees a spike in action during the workday when people are networking, sales prospecting, recruiting, etc. You could be sacrificing engagement by sending your content to every network at the same time.
Which social media platforms can be effectively managed together?
Of course, some social media platforms can be managed simultaneously and are ideal for social media cross-posting. In terms of content, Facebook and Instagram, for instance, both have a wide range of users and support a variety of content formats, such as text, images, videos, and live streams. Other social media platforms that can be effectively managed together include
- Twitter and LinkedIn, which are both popular for professional networking and sharing news and industry insights.
- Pinterest and YouTube, which are both visual platforms that are well-suited for sharing creative content, such as recipes, DIY projects, and fashion inspiration.
- Facebook and LinkedIn, which can both be used to build an employer brand and for recruiting purposes.
Of course, you can also manage social media platforms from different categories together, as long as you have a good understanding of each platform's audience and content format. For example, you could manage Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter together, as long as you create different content for each platform that is tailored to the specific audience.
Satisfying each platform’s algorithm makes things slightly more complicated. On Facebook, for instance, organic reach is low so it incentivizes paid posts. As a result, posting too often could be a waste of time and resources. Conversely, Twitter’s always-on, fast-moving nature rewards quantity over quality. Timelines are chronologically organized, meaning your brand needs to post more regularly to be seen.
4 Tips for automating and optimizing cross-platform posting
It’s complex to figure out when to post what, and where. Automation and other social media tools like Clearview Social’s PeakTime can help. Follow these tips to help streamline the process of social media cross-posting.
1. Start with a content calendar
Content calendars can help you visualize the long-term performance and trajectory of your social media accounts and your overall content strategy. They also make it easier for employees across multiple departments to determine where your content is performing well, and where there could be a progress improvement.
[WATCH: Free Webinar: Build Your 2023 Content Calendar]
2. Use an automation tool
Content automation tools come in many shapes and sizes. Ideally, you’ll find a platform that does the heavy lifting of scheduling and distributing content in a way that’s optimized for each channel.
Clearview Social’s PeakTime™ is a smart scheduling algorithm that finds the best times for your LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook posts to get the most views—and engagement. PeakTime™ uses data from millions of unique social media posts to figure out the best day and time to send your post. Then, it schedules shares individually and automatically per social network to achieve the best results.
Take the hassle out of figuring out when to post to which channel, all while optimizing your social media schedule for maximum engagement. Learn more in our webinar: How to Implement AI into Your Social Media.
3. Create multi-purpose content
If you do decide to post on all social media at once, you’ll want content that engages audiences across channels. That means finding content that can serve many purposes, such as SEO, thought leadership, email marketing, and more.
Clearview Social can help your team repurpose content in just a few clicks. Our easy-to-use Chrome extension allows your organization to easily grab content on the web and incorporate it into your social media strategy. Use this along with RSS feeds, which allow you to link any webpage with RSS into Clearview Social.
4. Maintain a consistent brand image across different platforms
If you aren’t posting on social media all at once, there is the risk that your strategy will start to look disjointed. Maintaining a consistent brand voice and editorial guidelines for sharing content can be difficult when you’re managing hashtags, images, videos, and more across social media networks.
This is another area where artificial intelligence can help. Clearview Social’s AI caption generator, Social Shuffle AI, can semi-automate the creative process of determining what to write for each social media channel. Start with a draft copy written in a social media-friendly style designed to help increase engagement. Edit it to make it match your brand voice. Then, send it through your approval workflows and compliance checks before it hits the web. It’s that easy.
Get started with social media cross-posting
If you want to post on all social media at once, remember that there are many things to consider if you want your strategy to be effective. Once you’ve got your strategy figured out, the next step is to implement it with the help of automation and social media tools. Learn more about Clearview Social and the features that make it easy to post to multiple social networks. Sign up for a free demo to get started.