I am going to get up on my soapbox for a second.
At the risk of railing on a topic that potentially no one cares about, here goes..
It is becoming common practice for people to tie their facebook and twitter accounts together so that one update will hit both services simultaneously. I think this is a bad strategy for a few reasons.
1- Not everyone on facebook uses, or understands, twitter. The constant flow of updates makes facebook feel very spammy and creates confusion for those who do not use twitter. They are two VERY different ecosystems that even use their own language. facebook updates and posts have no limit to their length or what media you can use, whereas twitter updates are confined to 140 characters and use a language for communicating that employs all kinds of abbreviations, codes and shorthand. facebook updates tend to be much less frequent, and can be richer in nature with the ability to add multiple photos, video, links, etc.
2- In my case, and I am quite sure I am not alone in this, the people in my twitterverse are not the same as those in facebookland. For that reason alone, it is disrespectful to treat them both the same. Additionally, there are probably things you might tweet about that you might not want, or your friends might not want, on facebook.
3- Social media/social networking adoption is growing at a breakneck pace. Yet one of the core values that define them are transparency and authenticity. The minute you start automating processes, you are a robot who is sending out spam and not honestly participating in a conversation. Scalability and time management are all valid rationalizations for automation. But they are also the fast lane to irrelevance for you and your message. Ari Adler had a terrific post about this very topic recently. This quote stuck out for me: “The
idea of automating to save time and update all your status boxes at
once may seem appealing, but it’s really akin to just walking into
every meeting and social gathering with a bullhorn, shouting out
whatever is on your mind and not caring if the people in the room will
get it or even care.”
Take this example offline for a second into the “real” world. You and I are talking about the chances for success of a lasting peace agreement in the Middle East, and out of left field you start telling me about this awesome blog post you just read about the new Star Trek movie. It’s supposed to be a conversation- are you even LISTENING to me?
Online communications, done right, serve to facilitate offline ones. You are putting yourself out there with EVERY POST YOU MAKE NO MATTER WHERE YOU MAKE IT. People make all kinds of decisions, assumptions and judgements about you, consciously or unconsciously. Make sure that they’re thinking that:
A- This person/company/entity adds value to the conversation.
B- This person/company/entity respects what I think and does not treat me like a number.
C- This person/company/entity cares about my needs and can help solve my problems, whether that problem is finding a good place to eat, choosing a PR firm or getting a good deal on a flight to the Middle East.
There is a perception that social media is easy, free and does not require much thought. My goal is to disabuse you, dear reader, of all three of those assumptions.
I will get down off my soapbox now, but I want to know if you agree or disagree. Please leave a comment.
10 Responses to “Social networking and automation- Not a great idea”
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Matthew Chamberlin is a social media marketer, experienced video producer, blogger and speaker at industry conferences, keynotes and corporate events.
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I’m glad my post got you thinking and led to your post. I obviously agree with you that linking your accounts is a bad idea. Tweetdeck now offers the option of sending Tweets and FB updates at the same time, and I use that sparingly, but never when something Twitter-centric is involved, like an @ address or an abbreviation like RT. I only use it when I am making some kind of general observation or update that I think would work for both audiences. That’s the key, really, thinking about who your audience is.
Too many people make the mistake of thinking “social media” all has the same audience. These people also need to realize that the “general public” doesn’t exist anymore either. We are all in a niche (or two) and expect to be spoken to as if the speaker understands that.
I think that you are correct that each of the major social networks and the communities/conversations you participate in have flavors. I used to use LinkedIn, FB, Plaxo and Twitter to communicate with different groups. About 30-40% of the content was applicable cross-community. With the uptick in adoption, my networks are increasingly overlapping. Not sure what this will mean from a behavior perspective.
Being new to twitter, I figured I might as well link it to facebook. My twitter and facebook groups overlap almost entirely. But I never felt completely comfortable sharing the same material across both groups, and Matthew has helped me to understand why. The communities are not the same; they have different norms concerning message length, style, and substance. I’m planning on using something like TweetDeck now for those instances where the message is likely to apply to both realms.
Though I have to admit that I’m a newbie to Twitter, I do see a difference here as well. I think a great application for Twitter is for traffic alerts from FDOT (why spend all that money on expensive road signs?). I see FB as more of a conversation among friends that give you some insight to their lives you might not otherwise know. For example, even something as silly as someone who says “coffee-gym” every morning for their status update. Next birthday, now you know you could always buy them some gourmet coffee! Twitter updates, I think, should be information that is deemed more “useful” or “necessary” for the moment. Still learning, though, so anxious to hear more.
Matt – Disagree with you, in general. Why? Too many rules scare me : ) Let each person – let ME – control their own – MY own – social media experience.
Guidelines are good, certain rules of thumb can apply, but I tend to lean toward the “use it the way it works best for you” philosophy. I shy away from trying to control how anyone “should” use any particular technology or even behavior. Got recommendations, sure. But lighten up, man! : )
As an example of the social media police out in force, check out the vitriol heaped on Chris Brogan after he took down his facebook fan page. Heaven forbid! http://www.chrisbrogan.com/why-i-deleted-my-facebook-fan-page/
But I dig and appreciate your soapbox, and would never begrudge you having and broadcasting – through the automation of a blog, which is probably itself fed through the automation of RSS to your many readers – your well-articulated and reasoned opinion. (whew!)
One last thing: it reminds me of a friend of mine who said he “HATED” (I saw the caps appear when he spoke!)how he had to “Press 1 for English” sometimes when he got one of those automated phone answering things. You know, the underlying “illegal immigrant” issue, brought to the fore of his consciousness by a silly voicemail menu. I asked him how much he HATED it – a lot, or a little. And after talking about it a bit, he simmered down, because, really, it wasn’t the real issue – and it’s not that big a deal. The REAL issue is a big deal, though. Tweets onto Facebook? @’s exposed to people who aren’t familiar with them? Even auto-DM’s (I’ve got one, lol)? Not realllly that big a deal, are they? What’s the REAL issue here, if there is one? (There doesn’t have to be.) I don’t know. Just asking…
Patrick-
Thanks for the comment.
I did not mean the post to be about “rules.” The point I wanted to make was as publishers, and we are ALL publishers, you need to make sure you are keeping your “consumer” in mind. As a user of both facebook and twitter, you know that they are very different services that do very different things. Naturally, there is some overlap, but they require different approaches. To make a crude analogy: shampoo and conditioner. They’re SIMILAR products, but hardly interchangeable.
Social networking cannot be a bullhorn. No more than conversing at work, at home or at a party. We all need to know who our audience is and make an effort to talk to them in a way that makes them feel comfortable. You don’t talk to your boss the way you talk to your wife the way you talk to your daughter. That’s why having such a range of communications tools is such a good thing: they give us the opportunity to connect in many different ways. But if you use conditioner where shampoo is needed, you won’t achieve your desired outcome.
To your last point of mixing the media “Not realllly that big a deal…” If your “listener,” whether it’s a customer, client or friend, SAYS it’s a big deal, then it’s a big deal. All these tools allow for two way communication. If, by mixing your update strategy, it slips into being a one-way street, then you will find yourself talking to yourself sooner rather than later.
Like the Outback ads used to say, “No rules. Just right.” My goal was to get people to think about their listeners, not just themselves, the talkers.
By the way, not sure if twitter is the shampoo or the conditioner here…
Todd-
You have hit the nail on the head. The one things that twitter lacks the most is context. It’s often referred to as a “twitter stream” because, like flowing water, it never stops but it doesn’t always allow you to pick up on the trail of conversation if you arrived late.
Communication takes work. Anyone who is married should know that by now.
I respect that different people have different goals online. But I suspect a lot of people see a way to “automate” and think first about the time savings and not enough about the implications to their audience(s).
Matt – (slaps self on head) Why didn’t you just say so? : ) I don’t disagree when you put it that way.
Except maybe for the “realllly big deal” part. One of the things we learn about human behavior is that sometimes the first complaint/irritant/objection is not the “real” objection. So, in a sales situation, for example, a prospect might complain that my price is too high – but that’s not the REAL reason the prospect is trying to derail the deal. Further probing can uncover what the real objection is. Similarly, even a facebook friend might complain (or silently sulk away) at seeing twitter updates invading the space, but a good social media-ist(?) would have ways to continue conversations and uncover what’s really going on with that friend.
On the other hand, of course, price – and tweets on facebook – MIGHT prove to be the real objection. In which case, they do have be dealt with, IF that sale or friend is critical, and IF the same objection is held by a mass of fans/prospects.
But you can’t and don’t necessarily need try to satisfy everybody and every objection, or keep every friend or follower. I digress…
Heck, I just unfollowed a guy because I saw a tweet he made that I saw as disprespectful to a person who had just died – someone he didn’t even know. He broke one of my rules. So, unfollow.
Matt,
Very much agree with what you talk about in your post above. I don’t have my Twitter and Facebook accounts linked at all – while there is some overlap, the vast majority of people on FB will not ‘get’ the vast majority of my tweets, as they will be out of context for them. At least on Twitter, if you see a part of a conversation that seems interesting, you have the ability to backtrack and catch up on earlier comments. There is no way to do this if it has been cross-posted to FB.
You also say “There is a perception that social media is easy, free and does not require much thought.” I recently had someone come up to me at an event, after having seen my presentation from an earlier event who basically said she “never realized how much work Social Media was, to do it right, until after I went back and started approaching it the way you spoke about.”
If Social Media is being done for a business, each platform needs to be evaluated and ‘used’ in the appropriate way for that platform. To me, automatically cross-posting Tweets to FB is like buying a television commercial and showing an image of your Billboard for 30 seconds. Different platforms = different approaches.
It takes work, and time, and effort (all of which seem to add up to $$).
Great post.