Social media: Identifying the platform that works best for you

For every busy social media marketer, there is an allure to scheduling the exact same social media messages across multiple platforms. It's easy and saves you a lot of time. But is it really the best way to reach your audience and increase your engagement?

Making slight changes/tweaks to your messages for each social network can help you engage your audience, and increase your reach and your engagement.

So how do you write social media content across multiple platforms? Here are tips to help:

1. Make the most of your content by sharing it on the most relevant channels.

Not all content needs to be shared on all social networks. Some pieces are better suited for specific networks. For example, a job posting might work better on LinkedIn than it would on Facebook, or Instagram. The sneak peak photo of the new menu items at your restaurant might work great for Instagram, but it may not gain as much engagement on LinkedIn.  Like how Buffer differs their content between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

2. Optimize content for each network

Each social media network has unspoken rules and expectations for content sharing. Make sure that the content you are posting is crafted for each network in order to increase the "sharability" of your content. Here are a few unspoken rules about the use of hashtags for each network:

Instagram: Use relevant hashtags and lots of them (although the maximum is 30), the more the better and get creative! Try and keep them cleaned up and away from the rest of the post, like what Hootsuite does here (they also know how to have fun with each network!)

- Facebook: Don't use hashtags. Just don't. A recent study found that while using a hashtag typically doubled the chances of a message being retweeted on Twitter; including hashtags on Facebook didn’t have a positive impact on the brand’s engagement levels.
- Twitter: Use relevant hashtags and try including trending hashtags when relevant. But avoid using more than 3 hashtags per message.
-LinkedIn: Hashtags are not used in LinkedIn.

3. Stagger your social media posts

You don’t need to fire off all your posts across networks at the same time. In fact, it’s a good idea to stagger them according to the optimal posting times for each network.

Keep your social media publishing to a schedule. A social media management tool, like Hootsuite, allows you to schedule messages in advance and also offers a great tool that will auto schedule your messages. This means that Hootsuite will determine the best time to post your message based on the network, type of message and how many other messages you've sent out during the day.

Scheduling messages ensures you’re posting at regular intervals rather than in bursts. Once people learn your schedule, they’ll start checking in when they can expect new content from you, building a certain degree of loyalty. This in turn can increase your click-through and engagement.

4. Most importantly: Get Creative. Change It Up

In order to be able to use content across multiple platforms properly, you have to change up the type of content. If it’s a video on Facebook, make it a photo and witty caption on Instagram. If it’s a tweet about the video on Twitter, make it a photo with a quote graphic on it for Pinterest. Make sense? Different mediums work on different platforms, so take advantage of it!