There are a lot of tools out there that were designed to save us time when using social media. I take advantage of a select few myself, such as using FeedBurner to automatically post my blog updates to my Twitter feed.
There are also a lot of people out there who have discovered they can automatically send their tweets to Facebook and/or LinkedIn. But does the fact that you can do this mean it’s a good idea? I don’t think it is, and I’m not the only one.
Several months ago, Alex Astell gave us Six good reasons not to feed your Tweets to Facebook and LinkedIn which sums things up very nicely.
I connected with British social media coach, trainer and speaker Nicky Kriel in a LinkedIn group when she raised a question on this very topic, and I was delighted to discover that our opinions are very similar in this area.
If you’ve been using automation to send all your posts from Twitter to LinkedIn and/or Facebook and are now seeing the light, Nicky provides some great tips for switching it off:
If you’re not yet using Twitter, or you need a few pointers on using it as an effective networking tool, you need my Basic Guide to Networking on Twitter.
I agree with you Janet – linking social media platforms means overkill for those who follow/friend/connect with you. There are times, though, when I will post an item that is appropriate for two platforms and it will save me time by posting in one and linking to another. But I don’t do this very often and do it with intention.
I agree wholeheartedly! I have often found my wall stream on LinkedIn filled with posts from 2 people’s Twitter tweets, including responses to other Tweeps. Feels a little time spam.
I consider LinkedIn a more professional environment and personally think Twitter’s more casual feel doesn’t fit.
I’m in 100% agreement. I’ve seen so many tweets in my Linkedin stream I’m thinking of dropping those people from my Linkedin connections because I already follow them on Twitter – I don’t need to see stuff twice. Same goes for Facebook.
I agree with Dawn that sometimes you’ve got interesting material for both audiences but PLEASE don’t put the @ and # into Linkedin and Facebook.
Thanks for your excellent comments! You’ve mentioned some of my personal pet peeves:
- flooding your friends/fans/followers with duplicate content (or more)
- using Twitter-specific lingo on other sites
I’ve actually cut back my LinkedIn usage because the news feed is full of tweets that have no meaning on LinkedIn.
There’s nothing wrong with cross-posting some items that are appropriate for more than one site, but automatically doing it with everything makes it harder for others to notice when you do post something of value.
One more agreement here! Each platform has its own personality, and sending posts automatically from one to another doesn’t honor that.
And it’s not just Twitter feeding to LinkedIn and Facebook that’s a problem; the auto feeds from Facebook to Twitter are annoying, because of how they get cut off.
I agree about the redundancy issue, too – if I follow you one place, I don’t need to continually see the exact same stuff in a second place.
Good point, Jeri! I actually set TweetDeck to filter out posts from Facebook (for that very reason) and from Foursquare (because who really cares).
Janet, thanks for the links you’ve inserted in your post. I think that automation overkill happens a lot because there are folks who think they can put relationship building on the Social Web on auto pilot… when conversation is what really matters most. I think that automating is not wrong, so long as you do it responsibly. In my case, I’d taken Pareto’s 80/20 rule to my social media marketing mix: as in 80% conversation and 20% automation, where the fix I’ve made for this social media fatigue is just the key. How about you? Do you follow any rules on automation?
I don’t have any rules per se, but I love your suggestion of using the Pareto principle!
I posted something on my other blog today that describes a bit about what I do: http://organizedassistant.com/2011/09/20/are-your-tweets-timely