Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Every year, a new digital platform emerges. In the last year alone, Discord, Twitter Spaces, and Twitch have all become very popular with consumers all around this world.

Now, social media marketers are faced with this issue: Should you curate content for each platform and its audience or should you save some time and cross-post on multiple platforms?
In this article, we’ll discuss the do’s and dont’s of cross posting, the benefits of this strategy, and some tools to help you leverage it.

Who can get the most out of this strategy?

Small brands with a limited marketing budget
New brands that haven’t produced much content
Social media marketers that want to focus on strategy instead of posting

Benefits and Drawbacks of Cross Posting
Cross posting is a time-saving measure that allows you to share your content with a wider audience without having to put in the extra effort.
The main benefit of cross-posting is that it saves you time. Instead of creating separate pieces of content for each social media platform, you can just share the same content on all of them.
This is especially helpful if you’re short on time or if you’re managing multiple social media accounts.
Another benefit of cross-posting is that it allows you to reach a wider audience. By sharing your content on multiple platforms, you’re increasing the chances that people will see it and engage with it.

While cross posting has many benefits, there are also a few drawbacks to consider.
The first is that not all platforms are created equal. What works on one platform might not work on another.
That’s why many marketers prefer to tailor their content to each platform and its specific audience.
Another drawback of cross posting is that if some users follow you on multiple platforms and see the same content, they may get bored and stop paying attention to what you post.
As with every strategy, you have to be flexible in your approach.

Cross Posting Mistakes
Now that you know what cross posting is and how to do it, let’s take a look at some mistakes you should avoid.
One mistake to avoid is reposting the exact same content on every social media platform. Just because you can cross-post everywhere doesn’t mean you should.
Your followers on each platform are likely to be different, so it’s important to customize your content for each audience. More on that in the next section.
Another mistake I often see on social media is brands posting content featuring watermarks from other platforms.
For instance, when you upload a video to TikTok and save it, the brand’s logo will automatically appear on the video. Instagram recently announced that it would deprioritize videos with the TikTok watermark to avoid recycled content from its competitor.
This practice also compromises your video quality while signaling to audiences that you’re focusing on other social platforms.
Here’s an easy solution: Edit and prep your content on a third-party platform like Canva or iMovie then upload to the respective platform to add additional elements like filters, sounds, and captions.
That will not only keep you from getting shadowbanned but also preserve the quality of your content, as it’s only being uploaded once.
Best Cross Posting Practices
When it comes to cross posting, the most important factor is the quality of your content. This might seem obvious, but it’s important. If your content isn’t good, people won’t want to read it or share it, no matter what platform it’s on.

Once you have great content, the next step is to tailor it to each specific platform. Now you might be thinking, “Is the whole point of cross-posting that I don’t have to tailor content to the platform?” The truth is that while cross posting takes the bulk of the work out, you’ll still have to do some customizing.
This means seeing which platforms deserve which approach. For instance, TikTok and Instagram Reels are both short-form video platforms. This offers an easy cross-posting opportunity.
However, posting a TikTok video on Twitter may not work as well since the latter is mostly text-based. As such, maybe Twitter and Facebook could be a better match-up.
On Facebook, you might want to include a photo or video along with your update whereas you could use the copy only for Twitter.
The key is to make your content engaging and interesting based on audience behavior on each platform.
And finally, to make cross posting easy, consider using software. There are a number of options available, let’s cover that next.
Cross Posting Software
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of cross posting, you may want to look for tools that will facilitate this process.
First, here are key features you’ll want to look out for:

Scheduling – The best cross posting software will allow you to schedule your content in advance so you can set it and forget it.
Customization – As we mentioned before, it’s important to tailor your content for each social media platform. The best cross posting software will allow you to do this with ease.
Analytics – It’s also key to track the performance of your cross-posted content. You’ll need software with advanced analytics so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.

Let’s take a look at some tools that will help you do it.
Hootsuite

Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management platforms. It allows you to schedule and publish content, track who’s talking about your brand, and measure your performance.
It also has a feature that lets you cross-post content to multiple social media accounts with just a few clicks.
Buffer

Another tool you can use is Buffer.
Like Hootsuite, Buffer lets you schedule and publish content, track your brand mentions, and measure your performance.
It also has a cross-posting feature that makes it easy to share your content.
Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a third option for those looking for a social media management platform. It has all of the features you’d expect, like the ability to schedule and publish content, track your performance, and engage with your audience.
It also has a cross-posting feature that lets you share content on multiple social media platforms.
When done correctly, cross posting can be an effective way to grow your online presence. Just make sure to avoid the mistakes we discussed and use one of the tools we mentioned to make the process easier.

If you ask marketers about their 2020 content plans, most will tell you they had to pivot because of the pandemic. In 2021, many said the same thing, as the world adjusted to this new normal.

We surveyed over 600 media planners this year and 99% of marketers who have ever pivoted their content plan did so in 2021, with 39% of them pivoting three times that year.
So how are they budgeting in 2022? Let’s find out.
How much are marketers spending on content marketing?
According to HubSpot Blog Research, 39% of marketers surveyed say they allocate 31-50% of their total marketing budget to content marketing.
This tells us that brands are leveraging content marketing above many other marketing strategies, as they put at least a third of their funding in it.

Wondering exactly how much? Most marketers surveyed (26%) said their quarterly content marketing budget ranged between $40K to $80K.
The second-highest figure was $100K-200K, reported by 16% of marketers surveyed, then $201K to $300K by 14% of respondents.
The specific amount tells us less about how much importance brands place on content marketing and more about the cost of this strategy.
It would be easy to think that all you need to do is write a few blog posts and that’s it. The truth is there’s so much that goes into content marketing, from copywriting and designing to research and media buying.
If you don’t invest time and money into it, you won’t get much back.
What Content Planners are Budgeting For in 2022
Before we can understand where marketers’ content budgets are going, it’s important to first review their goals.
When asked their top goals for their media planning strategies, 33% said it was to engage and grow new audiences.
The second highest answer was maximizing the return on investment (ROI) of their content.
The remaining goals are as follows:

Understanding which channels/platforms their audience spends the most time on (30%)
Analyzing the effectiveness of their content marketing strategy (29%)
Measuring KPIs across media channels (28%)
Understanding which channels or platforms are most effective for sharing their content (27%)

With this in mind, it makes sense that roughly 53% of content planners said conducting market research was their number one media planning investment in 2022 – either to find the most effective channel to reach their target audience or understand the demographics of their target audience.
Because so many marketers want to expand their audience base, conducting market research is the most fitting strategy. How can you market to an audience if you don’t know them?
Running an audit of their content to inform their media planning strategy is another popular investment for this year, revealed in our HubSpot Blog Research. One of the biggest challenges marketers face is understanding the impact of their content marketing efforts.
An audit allows a marketer to review their content, analyze performance, and determine high and low performers.

Which media channels are content marketing focusing on?
With so many channels and channels to consider, marketers say the biggest challenge of media planning is determining the most effective media mix.
Based on HubSpot Blog Research, we know that 84% of media planners leverage a mix of organic and paid media.
In the past year, many marketers have also dipped their toes in new social media platforms and features when pivoting their strategy – two in three media planners specifically.
Instagram Shops and Facebook Shops were the top platforms they tried. With Meta adding so many advanced shopping features to these popular social media platforms, it’s no wonder marketers want to leverage them and increase their revenue.
When asked “Which media channels do you plan to invest the most in this year? ” 14% said paid social media content, which marketers surveyed say, offers the highest ROI and the best engagement of any channel.

The second biggest investment in terms of media channels is organic social content, which is used by 43% of media planners. In addition, 9% plan to invest in it more than any other channel in 2022.
Email marketing came out on top as the most leveraged media channel, used by one in two media planners, and offers the third-highest ROI. Its use is also forecasted to grow this year, with 22% of content planners planning to use it for the first time this year.
In the past two years, we’ve faced so much unpredictability, which has kept marketers on their toes, to say the least. This year, it seems content planners are cautiously optimistic and equipped with strategies that will help them grow their audience.

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We meticulously researched the latest customer trends to separate the wheat from the chaff and provide you with a reliable sense of the general direction of eCommerce’s evolution. Here is what we discovered:

 

Customers are going mobile

 

Customers tend to discover more products online than in stores. 55% of them prefer it for convenience, 46% for greater choice, and 45% for the ability to research reviews and products (Bazaarvoice).

46% of consumers prefer their mobile phones for browsing online. Laptops are the top choice for 26% of the consumers, and tablets for only 10%. 

Even more interesting is where they are actually buying: 44% stick with phones, but 28% choose laptops, which is a 2 percentage point increase. Tablet users remain faithful to their devices; the same 10% browse and buy using them. It seems that some shoppers trust computers more when it comes to finalizing the contract. 

The reason might also be the greater convenience of computer shopping. Browsing sites on phones may be uncomfortable for some users. This is probably why App Annie predicted that US shoppers would spend over 900 million hours on mobile shopping apps in Q4 2021. Apps are simply more convenient to navigate than the sites. 

Data from eMarketer supports all these findings and predictions, indicating that mobile commerce will increase 18.8% to $97.15 billion during this holiday season and will reach nearly $4.5 trillion, or 69.9% of total retail eCommerce sales, by 2024.

In our opinion, considering that mobile devices have been almost equally able to service eCommerce as computers for quite some time, the latter are still holding up surprisingly well. The factors stopping customers from going entirely mobile may be greater convenience of computer navigation and the resulting ease of finding things they are looking for. 

Another factor may be the insufficient utilization of mobile-commerce-supporting technologies by eCommerce. However, these technologies exist, and, as we show later, are within eCommerce’s grasp.  

 

Customers expect to find what they are looking for easily

 

The assumption of ease in finding remains a key factor for customers going online but not entirely mobile, according to the results of the CommerceNext report, sponsored by ContentSquare.  

In CommerceNext’s survey, 42% of participants pointed to “Ease of finding what I’m looking for (e.g. specific features, colors, sizes, etc.)” as an answer to the question “What do you look for in a website when shopping online?”

It is worth noting that this answer was the third most commonly chosen, right after no-brainers like “Prices” and “Deals and promotions.”

Navigation is the biggest reason they’ll return again—it’s now as big an asset to a brand as expedient delivery. When asked, “What aspects of the online shopping experience make you want to purchase from a website in the future?” 38% answered, “A website that’s easy to navigate.”

The conclusion we draw from these results is that “navigation” may be understood as synonymous with “ease of finding.”

 

…and trust the reviews

 

36% of the aforementioned survey’s participants pointed to “Product reviews” as an answer to the question “What do you look for in a website when shopping online?”

When asked, “What type of content is most helpful to you when shopping online?” 59% of the respondents answered, “Product reviews/testimonials.” This was the second most chosen answer, after “Detailed product specifications” (68%).

This clearly shows how important social proof is for eCommerce.

 

…but they don’t want their information shared with third parties.

 

Interestingly, 38% of survey participants, when asked, “What do you look for in a website when shopping online?” answered, “Knowing my personal information is secure & not shared with third parties.”

This supports our stand on the future of eCommerce: Customers want personalized offers, but to get them, they want to communicate their personal information and preferences only with the brands of their choosing. 

Exactly like with brick-and-mortar stores, customers want to enter personal, consensual relationships with brands based on the foundation of mutual trust and respect. 

 

There are technologies to deliver!

 

Considering how capable today’s smartphones are, it is surprising that only about half of shoppers use them to browse and buy. As we stated, the problem may just be widely understood CX. Besides eCommerce frontends, many other technologies are able to enhance the customer experience, help customers find what they are looking for, and push them into action in a mobile channel.

 

Mobile Marketing feature

 

This feature uses the customer’s mobile device to deliver 1-to-1 offers anywhere they are with SMS, push notifications, and messaging apps. Integrate MobileApp Marketing Automation to track app usage, build dynamic behavioral segments, and send truly omnichannel campaigns.

 

 

The feature has great potential to push customers into action in a mobile channel.

 

Website Personalization feature

 

With this feature, you can make your website visitors feel at home with real-time personalization, lowering the bounce rate. This enables you to replace general offers with ones tailored specifically to them.

 

 

This feature addresses customers’ desire to “easily find what they are looking for.” Personalized content means showing only preferred products, reducing the need to browse the entire site to find just the right offer.

 

Social Proof feature

 

With Social Proof, you can create a unique, interactive customer experience in the buying process by displaying simple notifications on the product page that show other users’ interest in the product. 

 

 

Customer Preference Center

 

This is one of our latest features and the one with the potential to revolutionize eCommerce. Customer Preference Center is the first tool in the world that enables you to collect, manage, and act on zero-party data!

Zero-party data is data the customer consciously and deliberately shares with the company. It is not deduced from behavior, like first- and third-party data. It provides the most explicitly expressed knowledge about customers, their needs, their preferences, price ranges, offers they want to receive, communication channels, etc. 

It is the most reliable and relevant collection of information about your customers.

 

 

Data gathered via Customer Preference Center enriches the unified customer profile in CDP and is then easily actioned, such as in Automation Rules. 

 

 

This allows you to not only better personalize the website but also to send extremely personalized offers via:

SMSEmailWebPush notifications

Doing so increases your potential to push customers into action in a mobile channel.

 

Last Updated on March 29, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaSalesforce Flow is a fantastic way to automate various business processes. It allows you to create a flow based on certain criteria that you set. Salesforce flow can do many things – Create a record, Update records, Post to Chatter, Send an email, etc.
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Big Idea or Enduring Question: How to insert users with Data Loader in Salesforce? There are times when you will have to create users in Salesforce, for example, At the end of project development, create users for UAT testing.  Load users from legacy system to Salesforce. You’ve hired a few
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In 2021, we geared up for our first hiring push in the Customer Advocacy team  (our customer support team) for quite a while. Due to strategy and personnel changes, we would need to hire five new Advocates throughout the year, which is more than we’d hired in any year since 2016. Between hiring and other personnel changes, we started 2021 with 15 Customer Advocates and ended the year with 19.In preparation, we took a look at our onboarding documentation and process to find holes or improvement areas.When a new team member walks into Buffer, they’re normally greeted by their manager, a role buddy, and a culture buddy (you can learn more about those roles in this post). These three people are pivotal to the experience the team member has across their first 90 days. If there ever was a phone-a-friend during onboarding, these three people would be it!We took a pause before starting these hiring rounds, though.We knew that the first person who came on board would be in a unique position. They’d be the first new team member we’ve onboarded in over a year. In fact, most of our team had worked as a Customer Advocate for four-plus years. While we had oodles and oodles of documentation to explain all the things, nothing can account for the experience and context that each of these 16 team members had stacked up in their brains.Our empathy was speaking, and it said that walking into this well-oiled machine (ahem… as we’d like to think) had the potential to make the already tricky task of switching jobs even more daunting, and perhaps even a bit isolating.Our ideal outcome when staring this challenge in the face was to foster an environment where the new team member could integrate quickly and seamlessly into our close-knit team. What could we do to facilitate that?That’s when we had an idea — what if every team member in Customer Advocacy had a hand in the new team member’s introduction to the company and to their work as a Customer Advocate? What could that do for the new team member, the tenured team members, and the team as a whole?While the team member would still have their manager, role buddy, and culture buddy by their sides, they’d also now have 16 others performing as rocket boosters to their growth along the way.For the first time, we tried this integrative method of onboarding in the Customer Advocacy team here at Buffer in early 2021 with our first new hire of the year, we then used it throughout the year with our four other hires and through this cumulative experience we learned a lot. Not only did this new approach facilitate the new team member’s integration into our close-knit team, but it brought some surprise benefits, as well.Let’s dive into each of the benefits we’ve seen:Benefit #1: Our newest team member had a quicker integration into the teamLet’s imagine two scenarios:In scenario number one, you attend a party where the host says hello and then leaves to attend to other guests.In scenario number two, the host kindly introduces you to a second person, who introduces you to a third, and so on.Our goal was to create an experience like that of the second scenario.Budding co-worker relationships as soon as someone walks in the door allows them to quickly feel like part of the team. Positive Psychology shares, “Dunbar and Dunbar (1998) suggested that when individuals experience social pain in the workplace from feeling isolated, for instance, the region of the brain that is activated is the same as if physical pain had been experienced.”  Ouch!While the manager, role buddy, and culture buddy have always been supportive, those three people are only a fraction of the guests at the party. If I chat through some tricky billing scenarios with Nate and then dig into onboarding tickets with Essence, I now have two more phone-a-friend contacts; my list is growing.This relational comfort trickles into other areas of work and collaboration, too. Creating purpose-driven relationships with more people throughout their first 90 days tends to facilitate a higher likelihood that someone will feel welcome to participate thoughts in syncs (a.k.a. meetings), more forthrightness to ask questions in public forums, and altogether, just more confidence in knowing that their opinion matters.I feel so invested in! The time and energy the team has put into this onboarding is so welcoming, buoying, and confidence-building. And makes me feel so invested! -Lexi, Customer Advocate, five months into her journey at Buffer.Benefit #2: It created a system of reinforced learningWith new teammates feeling more comfortable they have one less psychological burden (that of worrying about how they’ll fit into an existing team), which means that their mental defenses have the potential to drop, allowing them to be more receptive to all of the new information coming their way.In addition to that, providing information in more than one way allows it to be accessible to more learning styles, reinforcing retention.Let’s say that you share a written resource with the team member about a component of their job in their onboarding checklist. Just below the resource, they have a task to schedule a call with Julia to further the conversation. The team member has been able to read the information, and soon they will also hear Julia’s experience with it. Perhaps Julia will also have something to share with the team member visually to reinforce the concept. If it’s something that requires doing, they can walk through a scenario together, as well.We just hit the big four learning styles:VisualAuditoryReading and writingKinesthetic (doing it yourself, learning with movement)Having meaningful conversations with every one of their peers helps new teammates fill their context and relationship-building buckets quicker than they would without the meetings. Also, the wide range of perspectives they will come across is invaluable to their ability to learn in the way they receive information best.I believe we’ve gone beyond just self-learning or learning-by-doing by incorporating these calls into our process. The blended approach to onboarding (being fully async while having the opportunity to experience a variety of approaches from other Advocates) has been a great experience for me. -Ben, Customer Advocate, 90 days into his journey at BufferAs an example, Ben shared:I’ve used Stripe before and thought I had a pretty good understanding of their platform but on my call with Nate, he showed me how to use the Fingerprint feature to track down payments. This is something small, but I was blown away. I really wish I learned this years ago at my previous jobs. -Ben, Customer Advocate, 90 days into his journey at BufferBenefit #3: It furthered the sense of significance for our existing team membersWhile onboarding has never been a one-person job at Buffer, the concept of intentionally including every team member who will work closely with a new teammate into their onboarding really takes the idea of multi-support onboarding to a new level.It’s impactful on morale to know that you’re a part of someone’s onboarding process and making a difference for new team members, our team, and our customers.Being a part of the onboarding experience for new teammates was a great opportunity to share the knowledge I’d gained from my work so far. The best part of it for me was listening to their questions/thoughts that came from a different perspective. It ended up being not just a time to teach but a time to learn as well. -Cheryl Appiah, Customer AdvocateIn fact, no matter how long or short a person has been at Buffer, their hand in onboarding a new Advocate is valued. To showcase that every perspective is significant, two team members we onboarded in September last year were asked to be part of the onboarding for two new team members who started onboarding the following December and January.What a lovely way to pay it forward.Lastly, asking team members to help welcome, onboard, and ultimately train new hires is a passive, but clear way to show how much they are trusted and valued by their leadership. Every team member is significant, and every individual’s unique experience contributes to the richness of our team.We’re not done hereOur process is always evolving, and with each and every new team member we onboard, we learn more and more about how our processes can be stronger or more individualized.What won’t change is the message our onboarding process sends to both our newest team members and or more seasoned ones.For new team members, we will think outside of the box to facilitate the most inclusive onboarding process possible for them. And for existing team members, their experience and creativity are treasured! They are all significant, and the time and effort they spend in contributing to the onboarding process for our newest team members is invaluable.We’d love to hear from you — what do you think about this approach to onboarding? Send us a tweet!