Why I don’t link Twitter to Facebook…or vice-versa.
OK…admit it. One of your Facebook friends posts entirely too many times each day and you’ve made the difficult decision to either hide that person’s updates…or de-friend them completely.
Hopefully you just chose to hide them. I will confess…I have done this.
As marketers, that tells us that our “fans” and “members” don’t want to be bombarded every day with 4 or 5 posts and updates from us on Facebook. They want relevant, important and useful information that they can use and pass on to their friends…maybe once a day…depending on the size of your community.
However, on Twitter…things are different. Twitter is a micro-blog with short, quick bursts of information. Users are accustomed to getting “tweets” from the people they’re following several times a day…if not more.
So, here’s my perspective. As a business or organization, if you link Twitter to Facebook…meaning everything you post on Twitter automatically shows up on Facebook…you could be causing people to “un-fan” your page or leave your group. Remember, your goal is for people within your communities to take your posts and share them with others.
Twitter and Facebook are two separate and very different experiences. While Facebook is a more of a personal engagement, Twitter is more business-like and wide open. You should treat them as such and limit your posts on Facebook, but increase your frequency on Twitter. I hope that makes sense.
Other social media experts (hint: there is no such thing) might disagree with me on this and that’s fine. I’m merely sharing my perspective based on experiences I’ve had developing communities for my clients.
Feel free to contact us with any questions.
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- uberVU - social comments - Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by SHDickson: Just posted "Why I don't link ...
it depends on the subject matter. If it’s compelling or useful information, then by all means cross post.
I TRY to post interesting stuff on both my twitter and facebook feed, but I’m sure since I have a wide breadth of subject matter (from design to the Panthers to TV and movies) that I turn some people off every time I tweet. I’m fine with that. At least my content isn’t the same thing every time I post — for example “make money, come check out my band, I just did X in farmville, good morning my tweeps” etc turn me off very quickly.
I find that most people link the two and just roll with it…not thinking about what they’re posting and if it makes sense to post on both platforms. I see posts come through on FB that are more suited to stay on Twitter.
Scott, I totally agree with you. While still a newbie to Twitter and a Facebook Fan Page, I believe I lost ground when I experimented with linking Twitter and my FB Fan Page for CarolinaLifestyles. Within days, I realized I was losing fans! I figured out folks were feeling bombarded.
In addition, I found that posting too often on the Fan Page was not to pleasing my followers, either.
I think it does depend on what you are promoting, but for my particular situation, too much information – too often – clearly doesn’t please the audience I want to keep happy!