- Can I post the same thing on Facebook and Instagram?
Well, the short answer is yes, of course you can,
but there's a big downside to it too,
and I'll break down what that is in this video.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to Five Minute Social Media,
the channel for business owners
that are tired of trying to copy
what everybody else is doing
and doing all the things on social media,
and instead want a custom plan
where you only focus on the 20% of things on social media
that drive 80% of your results and revenue.
If that's the kind of plan you'd like,
take a second, hit Subscribe, click that bell.
(bell dings)
That way you'll be notified each week
when we release another helpful video.
And if you wanna learn more about being on Team 20:80
to figure out that 20% of tasks,
I'm happy to start teaching you for free
so you can look at social media in a whole new way.
Watch until the end of this video for a special invitation
to a masterclass that'll be coming up.
My name is Jerry Potter.
Yes, it rhymes with the boy wizard.
And in this video, we're answering the question,
is it okay to post the same thing on Facebook and Instagram?
And the short answer is of course, yeah, you can do that.
It's okay, it's fine, right?
You're probably an adult if you're watching this video
and you're making your own decisions.
You're not breaking any rules.
In fact, Facebook and Instagram even give us tools
that allow us to cross post
from one network to the other, right?
And so you just go, "Oh, toggle that on.
Great, now my content is both places."
But here is the downside of that, okay?
The first downside is the platforms are different.
The way people use the platforms are different.
And everybody's a little different with that, right?
But at a minimum, a lot of times people log into Facebook
to catch up with friends and family
or sometimes with their Facebook groups,
but on Instagram,
people do log into catch up with friends and family,
but sometimes they're also just looking for more style,
design, hobbies, you know, different things like that.
So the user expectation is different.
Also, hashtags are a big thing on Instagram
and you can have up to 30,
but if you jam 30 hashtags into a Facebook post,
it's probably not helping your post,
and it's just cluttering up your caption.
So the platforms,
even though they have lots of similarities,
are quite different.
But here's the bigger danger
of posting the same thing on both, okay?
Let's say that I am your biggest fan, okay?
I'm Jerry Potter, I love you, I love everything about you.
I love your profile on Instagram.
I love your page on Facebook.
Just, I'm all about you.
Number one fan, right?
And so I open Facebook,
and because I engage with your stuff all the time,
your post comes up, or your story comes up,
or your reel comes up,
and I go, "Oh my gosh, this is amazing."
And I like it or love it,
I leave a meaningful comment.
I even send it to a few friends via private message, right?
Like, I've done all the engaging that you could possibly do.
If it's a video, I watched it more than once.
Then later that day, or even right after that,
I close Facebook, I open Instagram.
I see the exact same piece of content.
Well, I've already seen all of it.
I'm your number one fan,
but I'm not gonna go watch it again,
and so I just scroll on by.
Well, the algorithms
don't talk to each other in that way, right?
Once you post on Facebook and Instagram,
they become separate posts.
And so what the Instagram algorithm sees in this example is,
"Jerry Potter, your number one fan,
didn't care about this post."
That is gonna hurt it in the reach, okay?
Because if they're going,
"Wow, even the people who like all his stuff
didn't like this,
it must not be very good."
So how do we get around this?
Well, first of all,
if you are a times-trapped business owner,
as many of us are,
and it's just easier for you to post on both,
at a minimum I would suggest
at least changing up the content
so that it performs the best on both platforms, okay?
But you can just stop there
and your stuff will do what it does,
and that's totally fine.
The next level, though, is to stagger stuff out.
So if you are gonna post the same thing on both platforms,
then, you know, maybe you post on one platform on a Monday,
and then two weeks later, on another Monday,
you post it on the other platform.
The other thing I actually prefer to do
is to post it on one
and then not just exactly two weeks later,
but maybe it's two weeks and eight hours later
so it's going up at a different time of day.
Just a chance to potentially reach somebody new.
If that's way too much organization
to keep track of in your head,
then maybe it's, you know, 8:00 AM on a Monday
and then it's 5:00 PM on a Wednesday on the other platform.
But any staggering you do
is probably going to help it out quite a bit.
But if you do stagger longer,
like a week or two, like I said,
me, your number one fan,
I was all over it on Facebook when you put it up,
and if I see it again on Instagram a week or two later,
I'm probably gonna engage again.
I'm gonna be like,
"Oh yeah this was that great thing that they put up.
I loved that.
I'm so glad they posted it again here on Instagram."
Hypothetically, right?
We don't know that everybody's gonna do that,
but you get the idea.
So stagger if you can,
if you wanna put the same stuff both places.
In a perfect scenario,
you are sort of recreating the content.
You know, maybe on Facebook, you get a lot of video views,
and so you make a video about the subject on Facebook.
And then on Instagram an image is better,
or a carousel post where you swipe through.
That's the perfect scenario.
One level down, post the same thing both places,
but stagger it apart.
And one level down from that,
go ahead and post them on both places,
but at least customize the content a little bit.
Like, take those 30 hashtags off
when you post it on Facebook.
Now, this has been all about posting on social media,
but if you wanna increase sales
for your business on Facebook or Instagram
without more posting,
you should definitely take 30 seconds
and check out my Profitable Pages & Profiles workshop.
Hundreds of business owners, maybe thousands at this point,
have implemented what I teach in this workshop
into their businesses,
and a lot of 'em see results within a day or two.
Like Portia, who stayed up one night
making sure her Facebook personal profile
was set up the right way
and got a new lead and client the next morning.
Or Jen, who used the workshop
to make over her pages and profiles
and got two inquiries within 18 hours
that led to over $1,000 worth of new business.
But the record's gotta be Tom,
who set up his Facebook business page
using what we teach in the workshop, hit publish,
and 30 minutes later,
a woman called his business to book him.
And he said, "Where'd you hear about me?"
And she goes, "Oh, I searched on Facebook
and your page came right up."
This is a way to increase sales without more posting.
Worse yet, if you haven't set up
your pages and profiles the right way,
you could already be missing out
on potential sales right now.
Inside, I'm gonna show you the four essential items
every page and profile needs
so that visitors become buyers.
And the best part, go through this process once
and it will serve you for years.
Now, normally it's $47,
but right now, if you go to profitablepage.com/youtube,
this is a special link for people on YouTube,
you can get this entire workshop for only $17.
Again, that's profitablepage.com/youtube.
And of course you can also find that
in the description of this video.
And you know what?
I'm gonna throw in a couple of bonuses as well.
If you're not sure
that you are on the best social network or networks
for your business,
I have a five-part framework that I use with people
to help make sure that you're in the right place.
Like, where's your content gonna perform the best?
It goes so much further than just, "Where is my audience?"
You need to make sure you can reach them,
you can engage with them, all of those things.
And I'm gonna throw that in as a bonus,
as well as if you have social networks
you're not posting on as much anymore,
I have a special training called
How to Revive Your Abandoned Networks
so that it doesn't look like
you went out of business on Twitter eight years ago.
You get both of those now.
Again, go to profitablepage.com/youtube
to get that special price
just for YouTube viewers right now.
Thank you for watching today.
You're not only supporting me,
but also my two tiny superheroes at home.