Social Media Using Other Social Media

Recently, Twitter joined Instagram and it made headlines. It then made me wonder  if is it common for social media platforms to use another that isn’t their own?
I only compared Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and Twitter creating an Instagram account was the last to complete the full triangle. Each platform now has its own account on all three platforms.
After realizing this, I was curious how these social media platforms utilized other social media platforms. Here are my findings:
Instagram
Instagram uses all platforms in essentially the same way, sharing the same content. You’ll see this video of a cute cockatiel on all three social platforms, with just slightly varied (generally shorter) captions. They utilize the longest captions on Instagram. Also, every post on every platform is accompanied by a photo, which makes sense, given they are a photo-sharing brand.
In my opinion, Instagram’s Twitter is what is most lacking because most of their photos don’t show up on Twitter—you have to click the Instagram link to then open the Instagram app to see the photo. This also causes their Twitter feed to be filled with lots of links, which is not appealing to me.
Honestly though, I don’t even like Instagram’s own Instagram feed very much. The photos and videos are unique, but it appears (to me) that the only strategy is to find interesting photos. You’ll never really know what you get each day. Also, some of the captions are SO LONG. I just don’t see myself ever reading a caption that is three paragraphs.
Facebook
Facebook is very different than Instagram; they share very little on all of the platforms. They have a couple of recent Tweets and Facebook posts, but their most recent Instagram post is from July 21, 2016. They post the most on their own platform, however.
Facebook also doesn’t share all the same content between all three platforms. Some posts on Facebook don’t make it to Twitter, and most posts on Facebook and Twitter don’t make it to Instagram.
To be honest, Facebook’s social media strategy seems a little lost to me. Their recent posts on Facebook have been about holidays like National Friend’s Day and International Peace Day. Then in early 2016, they were posting a lot of “how to” videos teaching about different Facebook features. They sprinkle in some Q&A videos with Mark Zuckerberg here and there. There’s just doesn’t appear to be any sort of real consistency.
Facebook’s Twitter account, on the other hand, generally only promotes new sticker packs that are available to users. And their Instagram account has sporadic postings. Several years ago they were posting mainly employee and HQ photos that then turned into “Tag your friend who…” photos and then they just entirely stopped posting all together.
Twitter
Twitter has my favorite social media strategy on all three platforms by far. For one thing, they have a constant feed keeping up with current events. They utilize similar content across all platforms but it’s not identical—like they posted a Rosa Parks photo on all three platforms but with a different quote captioning each one.
I am most impressed by Twitter’s Instagram strategy though. They post several popular tweets as videos, like Superbowl tweets, or Obama’s last tweet in office, showing how quickly the likes, retweets and replies rose. But what I’m most impressed with is the way they are taking the phrase “A picture is worth 1,000 words” to a new level by posting a photo with a hashtag in the background. They’re photos that are so iconic, they need no explanation.
 
While the only social strategy I really enjoy is Twitter, if I take a step back to look at the brand they are promoting, they all make sense. Instagram is a photo-sharing site, so they are going to share unique photos. Facebook is a network built to keep up with friends, the business aspect came second, so why should they be constantly posting? And Twitter is meant to keep up with current events and share the random thoughts that come to mind. If we look at each platform’s strategy this way, I think they’re useful.
Have you noticed anything unique about social media brand’s strategy on different social media platforms? What do you think of them?