1 of the biggest mistakes made on social media

The first rule of social media is you don't talk about social media. JUST KIDDING. Fight Club automatically pops into my head any time I think of rules. 

The first rule of social media should be: Do not post the same content on every social media channel. Respect the platforms. Each are as unique as we are: different way of formatting posts, different audience, different purpose.

We know you’ve heard it before, and yet, we know you’re also probably doing it anyway. And we get it, it’s hard to come up with social media content, and having to come up with even more social media content if you have more than one platform seems silly.

One question we hear time and time again...Why can’t you just use the same captions and photos on Instagram as you do on Facebook, as you do on LinkedIn, as you do on Twitter?

Every social media advisor will tell you not to, but very rarely do any of them tell you why… until now.

1. Each social media platform has their own content rules. On Instagram, hashtags are king, but on Facebook, hashtags are annoying. Twitter only allows 280 characters per post. And somehow, even in the year of our lord 2021, you still can’t include a link in an Instagram caption at all (although they did finally open up link sharing to the masses through Stories).

You see what we’re getting at here? The rules for each platform often dictate that while one post will work well over there, on here it can’t be posted at all. 

2. Each platform also has their own best practices. Even if you stuck only to 280-characters-or-less captions with no links and limited hashtags and followed all the rules of each platform, chances are that post won’t perform very well, or at all. Take just hashtags for instance: in order to get any reach, you need 30 hashtags per post on Instagram, but 30 hashtags on Facebook looks annoying however, and will limit engagement.

Short one-liners do well on Twitter, but people prefer longer conversation-starters on LinkedIn. While you may be able to stick to a certain theme or topic for each post, if you want them to succeed on each platform, it’s imperative you optimize them not just for the rules, but to give them their best chance at success.

3. It gives your audience a reason to unfollow you. Beyond just rules and best practices, posting the same content across all of your social platforms is also a reason for many people to hit the “unfollow” button.

Consider it like this… you follow a brand on both Instagram and Facebook, and pretty quickly you notice they are posting the exact same content on both platforms. You spend more of your time on Instagram, and mainly use Facebook to stay in touch with family and old friends. Suddenly, all those posts from the brand (that you’ve already seen once on Instagram) become really annoying and clog up your feed on Facebook. Click, no more follow on Facebook.

Sure, you’ve still got their attention on IG. But in a world where it takes multiple touches to make a sale, and where you’re competing constantly with other brands for space, losing that extra point of contact could be crucial.

So please, stop giving your audiences a reason to leave the room. Providing fresh content on each channel not only helps you find new customers, it also helps keep their attention.

Making more sense now? At ESV, we not only know the rules, but we also know why they exist, and we’re always happy to share. Have questions or want to know more? Get in touch!