How to cross-post from Facebook to Twitter (2020)

Facebook’s native cross-posting option is ugly as hell. Here’s how to get more engagements on Twitter for your Facebook posts.

What you’ll need:

1. An appropriate preview image for your link or article.
2. A permalink.

Facebook’s native cross-posting system – the system that posts events and other Facebook pages from Facebook to your Twitter page as a Tweet – does not work flawlessly with Twitter.

The best way to post about an event or page on Facebook is to make a post about it yourself rather than using Facebook’s share option. You need to make sure that your page is optimized for mobile, as 85% of Twitter users access Twitter from a mobile device. If your post looks uninteresting or doesn’t convey relevant information, you won’t get nearly as many clicks.

For Twitter, that means the ideal image size for your posts (as of this writing, since 2017) is 1024 x 512, as that’s the size that best displays on mobile.

Sidenote: All posts on Twitter should have an image whenever possible, but the image itself shouldn’t be essential to understand the image. It should be expected that all professional organizations and brands use alt text for their images, to ensure they can be interpreted by the blind via a screen reader. Here’s a guide by Twitter on how to add alt text to your images.

Twitter will automatically shorten or lengthen all links for you to 23 characters through the t.co link shortener, giving you more room to concentrate on engaging copy. 257 characters, exactly.

For events:

Your copy should answer the following questions: what, when, and where. Due to the limited character count, you may have to get creative with how you describe your event. Remember the goal is to link people to your page, not convey all of the information through Twitter.

Sample description:

Free Adopt-a-🐔Event at Knuckleberry Farm! Find a new family friend for life. Open bar available. Discount with Student ID. Accessible facilities. ♿️ All proceeds from merch sales support @/MonkeyHelpers | 05.10.2020 4 PM EST More information @ [INSERT 23CHARACTERS] pic.twitter.com/z05TKCh4Pd

— DOGE 2 (@hachx0) May 12, 2020

In this case, longer words (like “chicken”) are replaceable with emojis that can be read by the screen reader and understood contextually. The image is relevant and commands the reader’s attention. Information relevant to people who are interested in attending the event is all there In the course of this tweet, we can ask the question – “is my schedule clear to pick up a new chicken friend at Knuckleberry Farms and support Monkey Helpers?” – and receive an answer to that question.

It was a challenge to fill the space Twitter provided for me. I still had 14 characters left. You can include information that’s relevant to your event, such as special requirements or ticket locations. The world is your oyster.

The work that it took to produce this style of Tweet is far more informative than what Facebook generates, and is far more likely to generate engagement.

Ben Valin has run Phoenix Collective as an informal charitable group since 2014, starting with providing transgender students free clothing and binders at FAU’s Multicultural Center. Since then, he provides social media management training for young LGBT+ professionals at no cost to them with the goal of providing them with a cutting edge above their peers. If you learned something from this article, you can tip him and support his work through Ko-Fi.

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Q&A: Why does my fan art seem to get more engagements overall than my original work?

Fan art occupies an interesting niché within the social networking village. “Fan art” refers to derivative work based on a publicly known outside property or media. The communities for different fandoms can be of any size – some of the most well-known fan art communities in community history have included household names such as Star Trek, Warrior Cats, and Harry Potter.

One of the connecting threads between all large fanart communities is that these communities tend to have a long history. These properties include characters and settings that people have fallen in love with over years, if not decades. When the work on those properties ends, fans are often left unsatisfied. They look for the answers to questions they’ve had for decades. For example, what does Hermione Granger really look like? What’s the day-to-day life on a starship like for the crew that we don’t see when watching an episode of Star Trek? What would the next generation of the Thunderclan look like?

Therefore, it would make sense that when you make art for a large community, especially a community that has a huge cultural footprint, more people will be actively looking for content created for and by those communities. This leads to huge networking opportunities for artists and creators – if you manage to create unique and engaging content, you can start and continue relationships with individuals who might have never had a chance to see your work before.

How can I use this to increase engagement for my work as a whole?

If a fan of a certain community sees your work and enjoys your style, expect a follow. They’re going to want to see future updates on your work!

For expanding your reach beyond just the influencers in your followers list:

• Reach out to fandom communities! You can do so by using hashtags, following fandom trends, and by directly reaching out to community organizers in your fandom. For smaller communities, you can even reach out to the original creators of your work (a note of caution: some artists have different opinions regarding fanwork, some of which can be negative).
• Answer the questions you want to ask! Think about your favorite book, television show, or graphic novel. When you finished the media, what questions did you have that were left unanswered? Did you picture the main character of a novel in a different way than their television or film adaptation? Someone out there is guaranteed to have the same or similar questions to the ones that you asked, and you have the power to answer them.
• Ask the followers you have what they want to see! A poll often gets far more engagements than just a Twitter post alone. The next time you have the availability to make some promotional art, create a poll asking your followers what fandoms they’d like to see your take on.

As always, if you have any further questions or want to talk about strategies that worked for you, we want to hear about it in the comments!

3 Beginning Steps for Twitter Content Creators

If you’re a content creator, having a Twitter account is an essential tool for expanding your audience and reaching out to existing fans. Here’s a quick and dirty guide to starting your Twitter journey.

1. Split your Twitter engagement into separate accounts based on your output. Keep a personal account specifically for you, and a separate account for each of your projects. Retweet posts made from your specific project accounts to your main account. This is especially important if you ever decide to start a new project or end an existing project but want a hub for your followers to contact you specifically.
   
   (Note: This is essential if some of your work contains adult themes. Keep anything that you wouldn’t want someone below the age of 18 to see on its own account, and flag it as NSFW. That way, you stay safe and avoid violating Twitter’s policies.)
   
2. Follow content creators in your field and talk to them. If you want a place to start, our website has content creators organized by their primary interests. If you’re a graphic artist, for example, search for graphic artists that work in your style or have similar fandom inspirations.
   
   Twitter itself has a variety of ways to find people with your interests. Follow anyone who makes work that seems interesting to you – no matter what their follower count, anyone could be a new potential connection or client.
   
3. Reach out by direct messaging other people in your field and commenting on their related tweets. We recommend that you treat people with the same level of respect that you would want to be treated, and not mindlessly spam strangers with the same generic message. Mention what you liked about their work, and talk about the work that you do that relates to their field.