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Cover image for 5 reasons why you should cross post your content
James Perkins
James Perkins

Posted on • Originally published at jamesperkins.dev

5 reasons why you should cross post your content

Content is hard to write, and even harder to get a consistent stream of readers or watchers to consume it. I have always repurposed my content because I believe that different learning styles require different mediums (blogs in to videos and vice versa). I also believe that cross posting your content is extremely important, even if you have a large following. Here are my top 5 reasons to cross post your content.

People spend time on specific platforms

People are creatures of habit, I eat the same breakfast everyday and have for a number of years, I go to bed and go to sleep at the same time. In the same vain, users will stick to the platform where they feel comfortable just think about your daily habits.

I tend to stick to 2 social media platforms (Twitter, TikTok), I watch YouTube and read developer posts on Dev.to

Cross posting your content means the creature of habits get an opportunity to potentially see it.

Established platforms means higher potential views

Established platforms like Hashnode and Devto a huge amount of users per day. This means that you have a larger potential viewership, below is an example of less popular posts I have published and cross posted. You can see from the table that the views for the established platforms are higher than my own established blog:

Table showing views for each post.

This means I have a larger audience even on my least popular posts, people will get to know who I am as a creator and potentially read or watch more of my content.

Canonical links can help

When you cross post your content you get the option to add a “Canonical Link”. This link points to where the original content was created. All of my content points back to the original on my website. This means all the links pointing to their version of the article count towards the ranking of the original canonical version. They get to use my content to please the people browsing their sites, and I get a clear benefit from it. This way, everybody wins!

Platforms share content

Platforms like Devto and Hashnode encourage writers by sharing content. This means their huge following have the opportunity to see and engage with your content. Below is an example of Devto sharing one of my articles and tagging me in it.

Image of the Tweet from Practical Dev

It’s easy to do

The final reason is it easy to do and you have nothing to lose! The great thing about cross posting is it is easier to do. I use a SaaS that I built called https://xposter.io to do it, it takes care of the heavy lifting. Just upload / copy and paste the content and cross post to Hashnode and Devto with a click. If you have an RSS feed you can use that to import your content and they will include the canonical link for you and it will even auto import the content so each time you update your site it is already ready for posting on the other platforms.

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