It is now possible to link your official Twitter account to your business’ Facebook Fan Page. What this essentially means is that you are now able to post to Facebook and Twitter at the same time.
While cross-posting is efficient for busy small teams and large organizations alike, I very strongly feel this is a spammy practice and should be avoided in most situations. Facebook and Twitter are very different platforms and users interact and communicate on each of the platforms in very different ways. These differences call for, at minimum, tweaked language per platform. Would you use the same copy for radio and television? Banner ads and text ads? Email campaigns and printed flyers?
If you would like to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts:
1. Visit http://www.facebook.com/twitter/
2. Select “Link To Twitter” next to the Fan Page you would like to connect with. You must have admin privileges to do this.
3. It will redirect you to Twitter where you will need to log in under the Twitter account you would like to connect to the Facebook.
4. You will then be redirected back to Facebook and receive a confirmation of the link creation.
Note: Facebook has a built-in option for you to undo this connection if you should need to do so.
Do you cross-post your content? Why or why not? Do you feel Facebook integrating this new feature will turn off Fan Page fans or Twitter followers from the brands they connect with?
If you do want to post select content to both Twitter and Facebook, I recommend a Facebook application called Selective Tweet Status that allows you to choose individual tweets (as marked with the #fb hashtag) to forward instead of overloading Fans with every single update.
http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/
If you do want to post select content to both Twitter and Facebook, I recommend a Facebook application called Selective Tweet Status that allows you to choose individual tweets (as marked with the #fb hashtag) to forward instead of overloading Fans with every single update.
http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/
Yeah, I agree with you. Jeff Himire recently made a post about Twitter not really being a social network. Largely, the problem is that social media is just clumped together as one big thing so brands decide to “throw up” all over each platform with the same message. The zero cost of entry hurts the credibility of the platforms in the long run. We (as a community) need to figure this out for TwitBook & future platforms that come out.
Great post. I agree completely that they are very different channels and should be treated as such. There might be only a few times where I would want to post the same thing in both channels. I like the integration, but I don't feel like I would use it that much.
Twitter really is in a class of it's own. I don't feel comfortable calling it a “social network” because of the lack of the traditional “network” element. You don't have to confirm relationships. They are often only one-sided. It's a complete meld of conversation (both parties engaging) and broadcasting (one party engaging).
I challenge brands to not only listen on new platforms they are interested in engaging on but to analyze how the user wants to interact with your brand before choosing your platforms. It is too often the reverse.
Thanks Josh for the comment.
It's a little frustrating when we're seeing this with so many platforms as well. It's not only Facebook and Twitter but also LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Buzz, etc. By syndicating the same content across all of your platform initiatives, you are creating less reason for your target consumers/users/readers to engage with you on multiple platforms.
Ex: Why should I be your Facebook fan and Twitter follower when I am just rereading the same content over and over? No unique value proposition.
I don't follow accounts that are nothing but auto-posts from Facebook. In fact, I strongly prefer not to do business with those entities at all, as they are clearly clueless about basic etiquette, much less marketing. Seriously, if someone thinks a truncated tweet that requires clicking to another site just to read the entire sentence is a logical or helpful mechanism, then we won't likely have much in common. The ONLY entity that benefits from this is Facebook, as it results in more traffic for them.
I actually appreciate this post. We will need far more folks like you bringing value to the community. Can I put this post on my blog? I’d give you credit and link back of course.
Sure thing Richie. Thank you for the compliment.