Why Linking Your Tweets to your Facebook is a Bad Idea

Clients often come to Echidna when they’re interested in setting up social media platforms, more specifically Facebook and Twitter. They are excited to jump on the social media bandwagon to help improve their online marketing strategy…to us, this is great news! But, when asked if they have set goals, objectives in preparation of creating a strategy for these new online platforms, the typical answer is “No”. To be honest, this isn't that surprising, most clients don’t. But, when we ask if they have resources in place to manage these accounts, and they response with -  "Yeah we'll be fine, it’s easy, you can link your Twitter to Facebook and only manage one - half the time, winning!" -  that's surprising.

So to all you newcomers to Social Media, one of the most important things you need to understand is that Twitter is not Facebook (and Facebook is not Twitter).  These two social media channels are completely different and have exclusive features. People will argue till they are blue in the face about which is better than the other for business, but the main take away is they serve their social communities in a specific way.

Twitter has a limit of 140 characters, and it forces users to be creative by shortening words in order to save space. Examples would include: “about” becomes “abt”, “with” becomes “w/”, “Social Media” becomes “SM” and so on.   Also hashtags like #Biz - used on Twitter to make it easier for people to follow specific topics - don’t serve a function on Facebook.

So when Tweets are replicated on Facebook, it’s clearly obvious the message came from Twitter. These messages come across as sharing, but not really caring enough about the audience to fully write a response or expand on what’s being said.

It’s Either ON or OFF

 In addition, a further problem I have with the feature is that you can’t choose which updates get posted to your Facebook account and which don't. It’s either ON or it’s OFF - and you have no chance to do anything in between.

For example, I on occasion take part in something called #SMChat (a Twitter chat about Social Media). Imagine if I forgot to turn off the automatic Facebook update setting so every single one of my #SMChat tweets - and there tend to be a bunch - would be sent to my Facebook account. All of my Facebook friend’s timelines (or your fan page) would be filled with half conversations and replies to other Twitter users without any context of what the conversation was about. Ummm ya, that doesn't make much sense does it!

Understand The Networks

It’s important to understand the tone of each social network you use and, more significantly, how people are using them. If you can identify why people are using them and why they’re following and/or liking your business, you’ll have a greater chance to have more meaningful engagement and grow your audience.

I’m sure this is a nice feature some people may actually like. I’m just not one of them, and I wouldn't suggest it for your business.

What your thoughts about posting Twitter updates to Facebook? 

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