Are you a Facebook user? What do you think of people who automatically post their Twitter feeds into Facebook? If you use Twitter, are your tweets set to pop up as Facebook updates? There are Social Meda “Experts” advising people to automate their activities. People are being told that it’s very simple, all you do is link all your Social Media platforms together and voila, they are all updated at once! On Friday I opened my Personal Facebook profile to find a multitude of updates from a number of people all through Twitter. I don’t mind people posting the same item from Twitter or via Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, BUT and it is a big BUT, I don’t think it should be an automated process. I posed a question on Facebook and Twitter about it and there was some lively debate.
These are my reasons not to automatically update your Facebook page with tweets:
- The frequency that you tweet is greater than most people update their Facebook status
- Twitter jargon doesn’t make sense in Facebook, if you had never used Twitter would you understand hashtags, RT and @mentions? Not everyone uses Twitter.
- The hyperlinks don’t work on Facebook. On Twitter, it is great if someone talks about something or someone it is easy to click on their name or hashtag to find out more, plus you can track the conversation.
- Facebook and Twitter have different personalities, the users are different. Social Media is social, it should be about communication rather than broadcasting. Who is listening to what you are saying and how do they like talking?
- Just because technology allows you to do something, doesn’t mean you should use it without thinking about it.
Here are just a small section of comments received when I asked the question.
I guess, it will depend on how you use Twitter. If you are using Twitter just to express your thoughts and you have friends on Facebook, why not share the same thought at once, as long as you are leaving out the Twitter conversations. If however, you are using Twitter for business and have personal friends and family on Facebook, then you need to think about it. Engage your brain rather than taking the easy route.
What do you think?
Other post about Social Media can be found here
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I agree. Both websites have a completely different way of working and I have different friends or followers on both. Both websites have a completely different age demographic as well and are used for different purposes!
Given that I think different messages for both are better.
If you are putting the same message on both twitter and facebook then why do I need to follow you on both!?
I have been guilty of this in the past and have changed recently. i think the same is true for linkedin which is again very different and I have turned off the automatic re-copying to linkedin. It is a site that I will have a look at getting involved in independantly at some time. I don’t want to just spam everyone. I want to talk to them.
Only question is: Where do you get the time to operate these sites individually and still do the sales, accounting, marketing and delivery!??
Is there an easier way?
Alan Donegan
http://www.enjoypresenting.co.uk
Hi Alan, I am not opposed to the same message going out in different places. There is a lot to be said for time saving applications, but I think it is worth considering which tweets go in Facebook and which don’t.
Good post Nicky. It’s true that it largely depends on how you are using Twitter and Facebook. I do have a business Facebook page, but I still think about what is relevant and what is not. I chat and engage much more on Twitter, while my Facebook Business Page provides less regular status updates/broadcasts. It’s a valid point that Twitter jargon doesn’t make sense on Facebook and conversations can’t be tracked.
Just as an aside, I heard someone at a networking event mention setting up “auto-tweets”. Hmm, how can you expect to engage when you aren’t even there?
Hi Victoria, I am not a fan of auto-tweets although I think that they can be used effectively if they are not over-used or set on autopilot. You can tell who is auto-tweeting when it is a bank holiday!
I think you have it about right Nicky. I don’t do Facebook for all sorts of reasons but I do use Linkedin which is what I need and has actually generated new business. It is possible to link Twitter and Linkedin in a similar manner to Facebook but the comments I put on Twitter are often in response to someone else’s comments which would make no sense at all if they were to appear on my Linkedin page. I did, for a short while, link linkedin to Twitter, but the few things I do put on Linkedin really were completely out of context in Twitter.
To automate ones posting between these different platforms runs a high risk of making one look a little silly at best.
Thank you Crispin, I think you have made a very good point. I have my Twitter autofeeding into LinkedIn. I did as a holding measure while I got to grips with Twitter and Facebook. I don’t advise it for everyone, but it has generated business for me and I have been surprised by the positive responses to my Tweets that I get via LinkedIn. However, I will be switching the autofeed off so I can learn to use LinkedIn better.
Hi Nicky
I spent the weekend attempting (and finally suceeding) in doing exactly what you’re suggesting I shouldn’t. The reason was that I wanted my company Facebook to remain up to date without my having to worry unduly about it. Most of our clients will reach us by other means so it is not worth my spending a large amount of of my valuable time updating Facebook, however should any reach us via it, I don’t want content there that is months old. However, I think I might remove tweets from my personal page, because that will quickly become annoying as you say!.
Ann
I have been advised tha Facebook professional pages shouldn’t post very much more than once a day. How many Tweets are going to be converted to posts daily? How much time would it take to post 3-5 posts a week on your Facebook Professional Page. There is a neat feature called Hyper Alerts which notifies you when someone posts to your page.
Thanks. Will have a rethink!
This is one of my bugbears for pretty much the reasons you state. Even worse are those who link their Twitter feed to a rapidly updating RSS feed and then link to Facebook. I can open my personal FB page and have to scroll 3 pages before I get past this stuff! Remember your audience and ask yourself if you would want to read exactly the same update across all platforms? Selectively yes. Automatically no!
Hi Veronica,
Luckily none of my friends link a rapidly updating RSS feed. I would unfriend them or at least hide their posts from my feed.
I think it’s so difficult to know what to do when there is so much conflicting ‘expert advice’ around. I was at a networking event last week and was told that I should be linking everything in together – Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn…
Currently I have a facebook business page, an FB personal page, a website, a blog and am on Twitter. I would like to make more of social media, but I do use each application slightly differently. I think you need to have a social media strategy and know why it is you’re using it and what you hope to achieve and then post accordingly.
I wouldn’t dream of linking Twitter into my personal FB profile as my friends would get quickly bored of me, and tell me so! I do have a link on my website to my Twitter account and it posts my last 5 posts (so that people can, hopefully, get a flavour of how I use Twitter). However, as I use Twitter to interact with both the people I follow and those that follow me, I don’t feel it’s relevant to feed this elsewhere.
Just as I think you should think before you post on Twitter, you should definitely think before you link sites. There is danger of overkill and not only will it not improve your profile and reputation, you may find that you’re damaging it as people stop following you and paying interest in what you’re saying.
Hi Claire, you have made some very good points. I believe that it is important to have a Social Media Strategy. Remember that Social Media is quite new so there are few hard and fast rules established. A personal rule I apply: I notice when something irritates me and a make a conscious effort not to do the same thing to someone else!
Very good post, Nicky. You make some excellent points. Who your audience is on each platform is important and Facebook and Twitter do have different personalities. Some on my business “friends” way overdo it on Facebook and my entire feed is filled with links that are maybe even relevant to me and my business but it just annoys since I don’t want to consume that much business info on Facebook. And don’t even get me started about people who run blogs and post every single tweet to their LinkedIn profile.
Hi Catherine, thank you for comments both on here and on Twitter. I am curious, do you only object to people who run blogs or to every twitter user who posts every tweet to their LinkedIn profile?
This is such a massive bug bear of mine – the main issue I have is with LinkedIn. I literally can’t spot the updates I want to see, as they’re swamped by hundreds of irrelevant tweets about just about every topic under the sun.
I was tempted to actually contact the people responsible to ask them to be more selective (or just stop feeding their tweets to LinkedIn totally), but instead I posted my own blog entry about this subject and hoped they would read it.
http://www.managemywebsite.co.uk/journal/2010/11/23/6-good-reasons-not-to-feed-your-tweets-to-facebook-and-linke.html
Unfortunately it seems that my update was probably hidden by all the tweets around it!
I update my Twitter (about 10 per day), Facebook (1 or 2 per day) and LinkedIn (about 2 per week) pages separately and that works for me. I find Facebook very useful for building strong relationships with my “fans” so I really make the most of the characters available for status updates.
Hi Allie, great blog article, definitely worth reading. I am one of the guilty people who feed into LinkedIn, but not my @mentions. Most of my connections on LinkedIn are avid Twitters so there is a lot of traffic on my stream. I have noticed that LinkedIn now has created hyperlinks for @mentions and hashtags which means you can track conversations better than on Facebook. I will definitely have a think about my Twitter stream into LinkedIn.
Hi Nicky,
I’m not very experienced in Twitter or LinkedIn yet but think I’ll follow my instincts and keep them all separated for now as they are very different audiences in my case.
I have friends who feed their tweets into Facebook and it can be a little annoying. I also believe in being mindful and try not to irritate my followers, friends, etc.
Great post! Thanks,
Gerda.
Hi Gerda, I think you are right to follow your instincts. Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment, I really appreciate it!
Hi Nicky,
Great topic and I agree with you that Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn should be seen as seperate platforms.
In my view the question is ….who hangs out where? If most of your personal friends are on FB then your tweets might not be appropriate. A more ‘corporate’ or entrepreneurial person tends to congregate on LinkedIn and would probably welcome being communicated to in a slightly more formal way. Your Twiiter followers are more familiar with hashtags and twitter etiqutte etc. and are used to the constancy and language of Twitter so should be happy to engage with you on that basis.
Always think about the reader rather than ‘one size fits all’ is the way to go I reckon.
Gary
Great comments, Gary! Agree thoroughly with your comment about always thinking about the reader. Thank you.
Hi Nicky,
This is a an interesting topic.
I agree with Gary’s sentiments above.
I do not advocate a ‘one size fits all’ approach. I do upload to Twitter via a Facebook page, but not very often – once, twice a week.
Phil
Thank you for leaving a comment again, Phil. If you are only downloading your Tweets occassionally then it means that you are consciously thinking about it rather than automating the process. There is plenty to be said for time saving.
Hi Nicky,
Some very interesting points in this article – thanks.
I use automation in a slightly different way: when I create a new blog post, using a couple of WordPress plugins the post is automatically tweeted, and added to my FB business page, and my LinkedIn profile – but I personally wouldn’t link any of the social sites to one another. As you & many commentators say, they are different audiences & different writing styles too.
I keep my blog (self-hosted) as the “hub” of my information, and have the social media sites as “satellites” to present my posts & attract readers & followers to then visit my website for more useful info, but the main source is always my WordPress site.
Thanks,
Tracey
Hi Tracey,
Thank you for your comments. I had a look at your website and you offer some very useful information, too!
I agree that automatically feeding everything from Twitter to Facebook, or anywhere else for that matter, can be frustrating.
I actually hide some of my Facebook friends not only because of the incessant Twitter feeds, but because they’ll post 16 comments on FB, back-to-back.
I utilized Networked Blogs on Facebook and, when posting to my four blogs, make sure I upload in advance and schedule new posts to appear on different days for each blog AND at different times of the day. My reasoning involves two major purposes: to reach as many people as possible by posting at different times but also not to bore people out of their minds by endless posts from me.
I also have my Twitter posts feed to my Linked In page and am careful to post things on Twitter that I WANT to appear on my Linked In page.
To be successful at social media marketing, you definitely MUST have a bigger plan than simply hopping online and posting.
Great article!
Hi Linda,
4 Blogs! I am impressed. I like what I have read so far! You make a very good point when you say “To be successful at social media marketing, you definitely MUST have a bigger plan than simply hopping online and posting”. It is good to start with the bigger picture and work out what you want to achieve first. Thank you for leaving a comment.
Really good Article. I have to say the timing was perfect because I am about to disconnect my twitter and facebook. I feel like I have been spamming all my “facebook” buddies. Worst thing is that all the mates are in South Africa and I am tweeting about UK services lol
I believe this is a great topic. I know that I tweet much more than I post status updates to Facebook, so I eventually disconnected the two.
I did, however, find a way to somewhat automate the process. I use a free app on Facebook called Selective Tweets. I tweet as much as I want to and it won’t post to Facebook unless I use the hashtag #fb. I can also post to LinkedIn with hashtag #in. This way, I’m not spamming people and I can do it all in one post. I apologize if someone else has mentioned this.
Hi Devin
Thank you for leaving a comment for bringing up this topic. It is helpful for people to know that they can share information across platforms when it is appropriate. Thank you for adding to the conversation.