As a business, brand, or community on Facebook, one of the most sure-fire ways to attract attention (and thus potential custom) is through a well-produced, cleverly-branded and engaging video. Videos are a great way to promote your Facebook Page and gather insights into the reactions other users have/how other users are interacting with your Page.
In the past, you might have wanted to share your video post on other Pages which you deemed relevant – maybe your storytelling podcast’s introductory video would do well to be shared on the Page of a supernatural ghost-stories podcast. But simply sharing a video rarely drums up the kind of traffic a native video does, and you might soon find yourself disheartened by the lack of interaction your shared post is attracting.
Well, that’s where ‘crossposting’ comes in. Crossposting is an innovation of Facebook’s Creator Studio’ which allows different Pages (whether run by the same admin(s) or not) to form a relationship through which videos can be natively posted across multiple Pages.
With live videos, depending on the permissions you allow your crossposting partners, they can often be posted directly to your page, without any further permissions. With non-live videos, your crossposting partners can repost your videos to their Page with a few simple clicks, and have them appear as native videos in their feeds, thus effectively doubling (tripling, quadrupling, and so on) the potential reach of any single video.
What’s more, an accumulative total of views will appear under the video on all uses, and all Pages involved in a crossposting relationship will be able to access the analytics for these mutually posted non-live videos. (For live crossposted videos, each Page is only able to see the interactions of those engaging with their specific video link).
Ultimately, crossposting is a really easy, straightforward way to engage with similar businesses and brands, and in doing so help each other to increase the exposure your branded content receives, by allowing you and other Pages to post content on each others’ behalf.
Just follow the steps below to find out how to set-up your crossposting relationship(s), select which of your non-live videos you want to make eligible for crossposting, and how to publish your very first crosspost:
Establishing crossposting relationships
- Open up your preferred browser and navigate to the Facebook website. If prompted, log in to your account (if you are new to Facebook, you’ll have to sign up first, and if you don’t already have a business/brand/community Page, you’ll have to create one of these, too).
- Navigate to the Home page by clicking the house-shaped icon at the top of the site.
- On the left-hand side, scroll down until you find the Pages tab (you may first have to click ‘see more’). Click on the Pages tab. You will see a list of Pages you manage; select the appropriate Page. You will now be directed to the Page’s profile and will begin interacting with Facebook as that Page.
- Under Manage Page on the left-hand side, scroll down and click on Settings.
- When directed to Settings, on the left-hand side, scroll down and click on Crossposting.
- You will be invited to ‘Add Pages to crosspost’ – these are the Pages you would like to enter into a crossposting relationship with, allowing them to post videos on your behalf and vice versa. Begin by typing the Page name or URL into the box. A list of potential matches will auto-populate. Select the appropriate Page from the list.
- At this point, you will be asked to confirm your choice. Note that forming a crossposting relationship with another Page will automatically allow both of you to crosspost each other’s eligible videos. For live videos, however, you have a choice. You can either allow the Page you’ve chosen to crosspost their live videos to your Page without further approval, or you can choose to require the Page’s crossposted live videos to be approved by one of your admins or editors before being crossposted to your Page. Once you’ve made your choice, click Next.
- At this stage, the Page(s) you have selected will not receive a notification. Instead, you will have to copy the generated link and send this link to the Page admin, advising them to now add your Page to their own crossposting list by clicking the link. Only when two Pages have added each other can the crossposting relationship begin.
Choosing which videos to make eligible, and publishing your first crosspost
- Now it’s time to select which of your published videos can be crossposted by the Page(s) you have entered into a relationship with. First, navigate back to your Page.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click Publishing Tools.
- In the new left-hand sidebar, click Video library. You will be navigated to Facebook’s Creator Studio.
- You’ll now see a list of all the videos you’ve posted to your Page. If you wish to make one of these videos eligible to be crossposted, simply click the three grey dots which appear to the right of the video title when you hover over it. Select Edit post.
- In the right-hand sidebar, click Distribution.
- Now, under the section marked Make available to other Pages simply tick the Pages you want to give crossposting permissions to for this particular video. You can repeat this process for any videos you wish to make eligible. (Note: when uploading videos to one of your Pages in the future, you can manage crossposting permissions during the upload, by following this step.)
- Having made your own posts eligible, now you can begin crossposting. Navigate to Videos you can crosspost in the left-hand sidebar of Creator Studio. This will bring up a list of all the videos from other Pages which your Page has been given permission to crosspost.
- Tick the box to the left of the video thumbnail you wish to crosspost, and then click the Crosspost video button above.
- Without having to re-upload the video, this other Page’s video will now appear to you in a native post, with the Title, Description, and Tags from the original Page’s post. You can edit these as you see fit, and once you are ready to crosspost it, all you have to do is click Next, and then Publish.
Congratulations! You have successfully formed your first crossposting relationship(s), selected which of your own non-live videos you want to be eligible for crossposting, and then crossposted your first video from another Page!
Just remember, in order to cross-post content across multiple Facebook Pages, your Page must first have a crossposting relationship with the other Page(s) OR you must be an admin on the other Page(s) you want to crosspost to. If you are an admin on several Pages, these will all automatically be entered into a mutual crossposting relationship.
