There was a question posed to the Catchfire Media team following our Highlight Midwest presentation last week, asking about the ability that tools like Seesmic Desktop and Tweetdeck give the user to post an update to both Facebook and Twitter at once. Is this a good idea? Our team says no.
Sometimes it makes sense to share an update from your personal account to both places, but it’s not a good idea when managing your organization’s brand on the social web.
Your Facebook and Twitter audiences are different crowds
How have you worked to build the fan base for your organization’s Facebook page? Most likely, you’ve invited a lot of personal friends, family, and close connections to fan the page. As you share quality content and your fan base continues to grow, what types of fans are you gaining?
The same questions apply to your Twitter presence. How have you worked to build your Twitter following for your brand? Hopefully you’ve had some great conversations and have created meaningful connections with your local community, business partners, supporters, and customers. Ensure that you know your audiences on each platform and are posting items that will appeal to them. Each audience has different expectations for the content you’re sharing, and each wants to see information that’s relevant and optimized for the platform they’re using.
Share quality content that’s optimized for each platform, and you give your followers a reason to both fan your Facebook page and to follow your updates on Twitter—sharing the same message in both places ignores the desires of your most social media savvy supporters.
Facebook and Twitter have different features—use them
When optimizing an update for Twitter, you’re likely using @ mentions, shortened URLs, hashtags, and other Twitter lingo (and ideally, your tweet is under 120 characters for possible retweeting). Cross-posting a tweet to Facebook (through an application like Seesmic or Tweetdeck, or the Twitter application on Facebook) looks awkward and will confuse your audience.
Facebook recently added the Twitter-like ability to directly tag friends or pages within your updates. Instead of using a Twitter application to push updates, take the time to get on Facebook and appropriately tag your update within the platform. Same goes for updating Twitter with a post you’ve created in or for Facebook. Is the Facebook post more than 140 characters? If it is, it will get cut off.
When updating in Facebook, the platform allows you to visually showcase links, pictures, and videos within the post. If you post directly from Facebook to Twitter, your audience misses out on the ability to immediately view any rich media content. Posting from a Twitter application to Facebook also eliminates the possibility of having cool, inline content for your Facebook fans. You want to ensure that the content you share through each respective platform is clear, complete, and immediately accessible to your audience.
Find your style for each platform
With a clear understanding of how each platform works and what your followers are expecting, craft your messages to fit each site, and you will likely have more receptive fans in both places.
What are your thoughts?
Do you represent a brand that has struggled with managing communications across multiple social platforms? What issues are you facing?
If you are a user, what tips do you have for companies participating on different networks? How can they make the most of each platform?
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I have been using ping.fm for quite sometime now to post updates to multiple platforms. I use that for updates that would apply across platforms then I can engage further on the platform itself if necessary. When I have a message that has platform specific lingo or features then I update direct to that platform with either Seesmic Desktop or the platform site itself. I agree it is confusing and sometimes counter-productive to integrate the two.