The Surprising Strategy That Lets Me Publish on 7 Writing Platforms Weekly—Without Burning Out

Word Wise: Practical Writing Tips for Freelancers and Solopreneurs

• “I can’t keep up with more than one or two channels.”
• “I’m too busy to publish on multiple platforms.”
• “I know I should build more profiles on more sites, but I can’t maintain the ones I’ve got already.”

If you’re building an online biz, the pressure to grow your visibility is real. And no wonder you’re overwhelmed. More than 100 social sites are clamoring for your attention. And that doesn’t include news groups and forums and publishing platforms, like Medium and Reddit and Quora.

There’s a nifty solution to your dilemma: cross-posting. Once you create your own process for posting on multiple channels simultaneously, you’ll be surprised at how quickly you can reach more readers. And you’ll keep your sanity, too.

What is cross-posting (and isn’t it cheating?)

Cross-posting is sharing a single piece of content across different platforms.

Disclaimer: You needn’t publish the entire piece on every platform. You can take a snippet and post it on X, for instance, with a link to the whole enchilada.

And no, cross-posting isn’t “cheating.” You don’t accuse a public library of “cheating” when it lends a book to different borrowers, do you? Cross-posting is no different. When you cross-post, you “lend” a piece of content to a different set of readers.

Cross-posting by accumulation

My early writing career coincided with the first waves of MySpace. I ignored the trend and continued to add one page of content at a time to my newly launched website.

But soon, I saw other businesses posting on Facebook and gaining traffic, so I started my own page and created a link to each new article I wrote. From there, it was an easy leap to a couple of hundred characters, so I’d add a quip from each new article (and a link to the post on my site) on Twitter.

Since content was helpful to biz owners, I needed a LinkedIn profile. And once I started building my own visuals, I simply had to add a Pinterest page. While I was at it, why not gather up Medium followers, too?

I admit it: I had succumbed to The Shiny Object Syndrome. But my social media sites gave me all that luscious click-through traffic. It was only the threat of self-drowning in Posting Mania that made me stop creating profiles.

Fortunately, before I went completely crazy (debatable), I learned I could post everything at once with a few clicks.

How I publish each week on 7 platforms

I write one article a week — one that has substance.

1. I submit the article to Medium.
2. Once it’s published, I post the article on my website — with original graphics I make on PicMonkey.
3. The article becomes that week’s feature in my email newsletter. I schedule the article on my site’s RSS feed, too.
4. While I’m in my posting mood, I schedule the graphics on Pinterest using Tailwind.
5. I create a pithy post with an interesting fact or summary sentence from the article and schedule it to be posted on my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (X) feeds multiple times, spread out over 4–8 weeks, using Hootsuite (a social media tool that allows you to schedule future posts). And very important: I save these posts to a special file (I’ll explain that in a minute.)

I work hard to respond to comments from readers.

To be fair, I don’t spend much time trolling around others’ sites. Sure, I read headlines and email subject lines. If a topic captures my interest, then I bite.

But hours scrolling through? Nah. I’m too busy creating and publishing my own content.

How I cross-post again and again

More than 90% of my content is evergreen — that is, it remains relevant and useful for writers over the years. I dedicate a couple of hours each month to re-posting my past evergreen content on my four social media pages using Hootsuite.

Remember, I keep a file of successful Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, Pinterest pins, and tweets that link to these evergreen pages. (I’ve got hundreds of them.) Each post has hashtags related to its content, like “#ContentWritingTips” or “#MarketingForWriters” or “#Nonprofits.” Where necessary, I tweak, modify, and update.

So thanks to my file, the bulk of my monthly cross-posting hard work is already completed.

I’m all about making writing simple. That’s why from time to time, I’ve considered shutting down some of my social media profiles. It would be so much easier to simply maintain my website and let SEO carry the day.

But then I look at my traffic stats. A full quarter to a third of it, in any given month, comes from my cross-posting activities. So, a couple of hours a month is a good investment.

How to create your own cross-posting system

It’s simple.

• Create content. Develop a high-quality piece of content, like a blog post, article, or video.
• Share it across a handful of platforms. Use a scheduling tool or the platform’s built-in features to post your piece of content to multiple channels simultaneously.
• Adapt your posts for each platform. While sharing, make minor adjustments to the caption, hashtags, or format to better suit each outlet’s best practices and audience expectations.

My personal tip: Remember — keep a file of your posts. Organize them in categories so you can cycle through them in the future. For instance, I categorize my posts by topic (Freelance Writing Tips, Persuasive Writing Tips, Writing Formulas, Tips for Writing A Book, Online Writing Tips, and so on).

This way, you can copy and paste content in batches into your scheduling tool.

Cross-posting reaches more readers in less time

If you get traffic only from a single source — like SEO to your blog or through Facebook or from Instagram reels — then you’re depending on a middleman to drive readers.

And you have no control over how that third party directs traffic. One change to an algorithm and your traffic can go bust. Just ask blog owners who went belly up after Google’s 2011 Panda update and its 2022 Helpful Content Updates.

On the other hand, you own your email newsletter list. But if you only publish to your subscribers, you limit your reach. Readers who need your content may not know you exist.

Cross-posting solves the dual problems of relying on one traffic source and a limited reach. Plus, it converts casual readers into my followers.

And cross-posting needn’t create a time problem. I post on seven platforms every week and a whole different set of posts on four sites every month. It became simpler — and I saved my sanity — when I created a cross-posting strategy. Try it.

Award-winning writer Kathy Widenhouse has written 9 books and garnered 750K+ views for her writing tutorials, which you can get at www.nonprofitcopywriter.com.