Habits of highly effective marketers: Cross link and cross post

Welcome to the second instillation of the series “Habits of highly effective marketers,” where we explore some of the fundamental actions that marketers take to do their job and do it stunningly. In our last blog, we went deep into why and how to document your marketing strategies and processes. Next up are two similar components of marketing strategy and content development: cross linking and cross posting. Fostered from a desire to use content to its fullest extent and the wish to provide viewers valuable content at their fingertips, these two strategies can improve social media reach and SEO (when used carefully and judiciously). Let’s dig in.

Cross linking

Cross linking is connecting two webpages, whether they are on the same or separate websites. You can post on separate websites that you own and operate, or you can collaborate with other sites in your area of expertise to cross link each other’s relevant pages, or you can even serve as a guest blogger for their site and include links back to your content. (When the webpages are on the same site, sometimes this is called “internal linking” or “contextual linking,” but the concept is the same.)

Cross linking is a proven SEO tactic that can increase the ranking of your webpages on Google, and it can take many forms: think about the “You might also like” section on any eCommerce site, a side column of “More like this,” or even the works cited page at the end of an academic paper. Cross links may be most recognizable as a literal hyperlink embedded to text on your website that refers you to a related resource discussing the same or similar content. For instance, we might anticipate readers would want to learn more about B2B social media marketing (especially when reading about cross posting) and link to our free eBook on the subject.

Some websites have features to auto-cross link or suggest cross linking, and crosslinking can be done manually based on the content at hand. Why would you bother? Cross linking has myriad benefits:

• Aids search engine ratings by improving your SERP (search engine results pages) and generates web traffic to your site.
• Keeps readers engaged by suggesting additional content, similar or related to what they are currently looking at.
• Increases webpage visits, and visitors to your website will likely stay longer.
• Demonstrates to your website visitors that you have a deep knowledge in the area of their interest, which builds your webpage’s authority in that content area.

Some things to keep in mind when cross linking:

• Don’t worry about over-optimizing the anchor text when cross linking via a hyperlink. Make the applicable and natural to your copy instead of worrying about it being a keyword or long-tail keyword. If they can be keywords, great, but don’t agonize over it.
• Don’t overuse cross links. A few hyperlinks throughout your document will do the trick, and too much can cause your reader to feel overwhelmed—plus, too many cross links on a webpage may cause the search engine to flag it.
• When cross linking to another website outside your own, don’t hide your association—people find that fishy for obvious reasons! Are you being paid to put in this cross link? Are you trying to sell something? Is this truly helpful resource, or just clickbait?
• Make sure your cross links are related to current page topic and can add true value for your web visitor (as should be your goal with all content generally). Nobody wants to click on a link thinking they are going to more info about improving your social media strategy but actually be led to a landing page for an unrelated topic, a broken link, or even a product they don’t want to learn about.

Cross posting

Cross posting is recycling content between social media platforms so that your content can work harder for you—content across several platforms means that your message can reach more people, you use the content you’ve created to a fuller degree, and you build out presences on more platforms. It’s a great way for your social media marketers to stretch their creative muscles and use the same content in a variety of ways

But while cross posting can be a great thing, it can also be done badly. A strong cross posting strategy does not just use the exact same message/content across all social media platforms—think about every time you post on Instagram and the app asks, “Also post to Facebook?” If the same exact post goes out to all of your social accounts, you lose the opportunity to customize and curate that post for each distinct platform and audience on that platform, plus you run the risk of boring your viewers with content they see in more than one place or giving the perception of your brand as unthoughtful or lazy.

When cross posting, consider:

• What is the goal of your post, and who is the audience? Keep in mind that the primary audience of each platform varies—demographic and psychographic—and your perfect Facebook post will not necessarily work on Twitter! That doesn’t mean you can’t reuse content, but likely not all content, and you should use your creativity and consideration for goal and audience to make the content you cross post effective where it is housed.
• Does the message fit within the platform you’re posting it on? For instance, LinkedIn is a professional development and thought leader platform, while Instagram is highly visual and much more lifestyle/culture focused than professional development focused. You wouldn’t want to post something originally designed to work within the LinkedIn stage
• Look at the social platform standards of your industry. What kind of content typically goes on that platform generally, and for your industry specifically? Knowing this will help you align to the standards of the industry with social posts (generally) and cross posts…or purposefully break from that standard.
• What is the accepted language and tone for that platform? Observe what you see other people posting, but also look to your style guide. Does your company prefer you be more professional and proper in content and grammar on LinkedIn, but allow sarcasm, emojis, and fragments on Twitter and Instagram? Cross posting an identical post to all three of these platforms will make at least one feel very wrong compared to the rest of your content there.
• What handles, hashtags, and character limits does each platform have? What about supported content types, sizes, and other abilities of the platform? Cross posting without double checking this might cause you to miss a valuable hashtag, cut off a post that is too long for that platform, post an image that gets auto-cropped in a bad way, or even use handles that are on the original platform but not on the cross posted platform. All these are classic signs of uncurated cross posting – beware!

So you’ve cross posted – congratulations! The work isn’t over, though. Now you measure your campaign’s success and reach with analytics. Some platforms will perform better than others—and this is dependent on the content and how well you adjust it for each platform, your audience, post time and quantity, use of hashtags and handles, promoting, your industry’s platform presence, and the considerations go on. Make sure to monitor the metrics you are concerned for and apply new strategies accordingly. (Don’t worry, more on measuring in the next blog of this series!)

Get started

Your marketing skyrockets to the next level of effectiveness when you use strategies and tools that help you go further with less effort. Dynamics 365 Marketing has a robust set of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools—from contact and account management, to lead scoring, to email marketing, campaign orchestration, marketing forms, landing pages, analytics, and social media posting. Scheduling your posts across many social media accounts—and arranging cross posts—is a snap, and you have a holistic, 360 view of your social media content.

Schedule a call with our CRM consultants today. We can show you a personalized demo of the system, answer all your questions, and help you decide if Dynamics 365 Marketing CRM is right for your organization. If you choose yes, we will be with you every step of the way, even well after your successful implementation.