Social media is just an online extension of our offline, social behavior. When something interesting happens you may tell a story about it at work. You may also tell that story at lunch the next day, at a bar and again that weekend at a party. Only a jerk would call you out and say “hey you told that story at the party the other day!” Sure, some people may of been at both the coffee shop and the party and if so… who cares. Not everybody was there. If you’ve heard it already, realize that not everyone else has. Same thing goes for social media – if you’ve read it already on another social network, just keep scrolling.
The funny thing is it’s always the “social media experts” who are so big on the anti-cross posting bandwagon. What if someone really values what you have to say, because you are indeed an expert, and they don’t want to miss your valuable posts? To get everything you have to say they would need to follow you and keep up with you on every network you’re on? That’s crazy. If someone wants to keep up with you they should be able to follow you in one place and get what they need. If you’re on multiple networks let people choose which one they prefer to follow you on, but that shouldn’t mean they now just get 1/3 of your posts.
Now some claim different networks have different audiences and therefore deserve different content. There is certainly truth to that. Your friends or followers on certain networks may be weighted toward certain demographics. For example, my Twitter is certainly more industry based whereas Facebook is more personal. However I still have personal friends that are only on Twitter and personal friends that are only on Facebook. I think it’s fair to say nobody has 100% the exact same connections on multiple networks. If you do then you should just pick one and drop the others otherwise what is the point? If someone wants to post something they would like all of their friends to see there is nothing wrong with posting it in a couple different places to make that happen.
Cross posting only bothers “social media experts” because they are like the guy who is at your office, the coffee shop, the bar and the party. They hear your story every time you tell it. That’s their problem, not yours.
Where I think people get into trouble with auto posting. I’m not a fan of automating everything so that it instantly posts to all of your networks, but I certainly don’t think there is anything wrong with posting something everywhere you have an audience. The thing you don’t want to do is automatically post your facebook messages to twitter. If I’m on twitter I don’t want to have to click a link that takes me to Facebook to see your post. That kind of cross posting is bad. But simply sharing an article or photo on both twitter and facebook and LinkedIn? Nothing wrong with that!
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