[Mavsocial] Everything You Need to Know About Repeating Social Media Posts

It turns out that many marketers (pointing at self here) have got it all wrong when it comes to social media content. It’s not unusual to slave over a killer piece of content, and then share it on social media to deafening silence.

This is when the vast majority of marketers and content creators throw in the towel, and move on to the next content piece. The good news is there is a better and less painful approach to social media content.

Mastering the art of repeating social media posts is the key to increasing reach, engagement, traffic, leads, and sales.

Your content deserves a second chance to ‘make it big’

After investing so much time and effort in your social media posts and content, you should be willing to give it a chance to really prove itself.

Repeating social media posts is known to increase overall reach, engagement and traffic. 
Social media analytics firm Wiselytics reviewed 1 million tweets and found on average that a repeated tweet performed 86% as well as the original tweet.

The analysis also showed there was significant value in repeating tweets more than once, with even the sixth repetition of a tweet performing 67% as well as the first tweet.

Is it really okay to repeat social media posts?

It’s not only okay, but necessary if you want to reach more of your audience.

The simple fact is that your followers aren’t online 24/7, and even when they are, they may not see your post due to low organic reach and competition.

Increasing the chance of your followers seeing your post is even more critical when you consider that the average half-life of a tweet is just 30 minutes!

It’s also no secret that organic reach for Facebook pages has steadily decreased over the last few years, with Edgerank Checker citing a drop from 16% to 6.5% and Social@Ogilvy reporting organic reach as low as 2% for pages with a large following.

When it comes to Twitter the number of followers who actually see your tweets may be as little as 2%.
Due to the low organic reach of these two platforms, it’s worth focusing on Twitter and Facebook when it comes to repeating your social media content.

What about overlap? Won’t my followers see the same thing twice?

Low organic reach means it’s unlikely that your followers will see a repeated post.

According to Wiselytics, a repeated Facebook post overlaps its first post by only 30% and only 14% of your Twitter audience is likely to see a repeated tweet twice.

The high likelihood of increased reach and performance, significantly outweighs the low risk of overlap.

I don’t want to spam my audience

When social media posts are repeated with restraint, it’s unlikely to be perceived as spam, even in the unlikely scenario that a follower sees a post more than once.

The important thing is to provide value or interest in your content so your followers appreciate you sharing it with them. That being said, repeating the same content every hour, is likely to annoy even your most forgiving followers, no matter how interesting it is.

Using a scheduling tool like MavSocial’s campaigns with MavRepeater enables you to identify and avoid any potential overlap, saturation or clumping of posts.

Additionally you should take your own social media habits into account. How often is too much for you? This will give you a good indication of what to avoid.

What kind of social media posts should I repeat?

Social media content that lends itself best to repeating include:

• Regular promotions or events such as webinars
• Content that contains still-relevant links
• Evergreen and timeless content
• Popular posts
• Big news
• High value content and lead magnets
• Content for different time zones
• Posts in Facebook groups where the moderator asks for the same type of discussions or posts each week, such as promote or shoutout days.

You should also consider tweaking content for re-posting if it didn’t get the reach or engagement you expected.

What to do when repeating social media posts

Make sure to do all of the following for the best results:

• • Automate your repeat posts – a scheduling tool like MavRepeater enables you to publish a group of posts (we call it a campaign) continuously at the time(s) you decide. It will literally save you hours and hours per week.

• Stagger repeat posts – Most social media platforms don’t allow for duplicate messages to be re-posted within a certain timeframe, so use a scheduling tool such as MavRepeater to spread out your posts.
• Consider the platform you are using – every platform is slightly different, and generally speaking it’s worth spreading out your repeat posts a little more on Facebook than on Twitter.
• Use a variety of posts – it’s best practice to use a mix of different posts between repeated posts to avoid overlapping and maintain audience interest.
• Retire posts – if a post becomes outdated or is underperforming after repeating it several times, remove it from your content schedule. You may like to revisit it at a later date though, as it’s not unheard of for a re-post to go viral, several months after the original post.
• Target other time zones – if you have a large following around the world, you should consider repeating your posts at different times of the day.
• Use variations of a post – you can tweak the headline, image or hook, or even ask an audience question. This means you can promote the same content even more frequently and not face duplicate issues. Running two slightly different posts also allows you to split-test your content and enhance future performance.
• Monitor your results – check the performance of your repeated posts and campaigns on a regular basis, looking for any significant changes in post activity. You will also want to identify any slow fading interest in a post.

How to keep your content alive