You’ve likely seen cross-posting while scrolling through your social media feeds. Cross-posting is a digital marketing tactic that leverages third-party partnerships to facilitate cross-promotion of owned digital content across unowned digital properties. Meaning, your brand may share another brand’s content, or another brand may share your content. This can be incredibly beneficial as most cross-posting methods enable control over brand messaging and post-level data, while also boosting brand awareness, reach and engagement across owned channels.
Cross-posting in the wild
A fantastic example of cross promotion and social cross-posting is between Laughing Man Coffee, owned by Hugh Jackman, and Aviation American Gin, owned by Ryan Reynolds. The actors formed a lasting friendship on the set, and now as business owners engage in cross-posting to further their awareness and engagement. While they will do small promotions that are shareable, they also created ads for each other’s brands and shared them via social media, making for some engaging posts benefiting both brands.
Three types of cross-posting
There are three main types of cross-posting methods that a brand can employ depending on the relationship and capabilities of the brands participating:
Organic sharing – The simplest method of cross-posting works for all content and across all channels (except for Instagram). Brands can simply share a post or video by clicking the share button (Facebook and YouTube) or retweet (Twitter). This is an extremely easy form of sharing and posts will contribute to engagement counts while keeping the message unaltered. However, sharing does not allow brands to promote a post and/or adapt the post to their brand voice for marketing purposes. Sharing is best for brands with limited social media experience.
Direct brand posting – This method requires the development of a social toolkit that provides the cross-posting brand with approved copy, advertising terms of use, tagging guidelines and paired assets they would be authorized to post directly on their owned channels. When combined with a branded social toolkit, this method allows brands to integrate their own voice for a given post while maintaining quality standards and consistent messaging. Brands must have confidence in each other to use this route and any engagement will be reaped by the poster.
Partner channel cross-posting – This is the most formal and more difficult method of the three. Partner cross-posting requires the establishment of a cross-posting relationship between brands’ Facebook and Instagram accounts to allow for the sharing of saved or live video content. To ensure consistent messaging it’s recommend to provide pre-approved copy to accompany any video available for cross-posting. Much like sharing, all engagement generated by a cross-posted video is shared by both channels, while also allowing for the sharing brand incorporate their own brand voice and utilize cross-posted videos for paid social. Partner cross-posting is only available for Facebook and Instagram.
Time to share!
Creating a social media cross-posting relationship with another brand can provide numerous benefits, including furthering awareness and boosting engagement. To make this tactic successful, it will be imperative that both brands are on the same page and have respect for each other’s brand voice and messaging.
