If you’re a business who devotes a segement of your resources to improving your online profile then it’s most likely you’ll have several social media profiles such as Facebook or Twitter in you’re online toolbox. Both of these social giants are a great way to bring you closer to your client base.
However, both of these social sites perform differently and should be treated as such.
I’ve come across quite a few online businesses recently that ‘buy into‘ the ‘one update fits all‘ category. By twinning their Twitter & Facebook profiles under an auto-update tool they feel their cutting down on the time spent communicating while still reaching their audience and getting their message across. Their not! Their conning their audience and before too long their split-personality, communicado will neither be one thing nor another.
Let’s break this down a bit…
Twitter is a great tool to deliver a short, sharp, verbal burst of an update – it’s called microblogging for a reason. Having a Facebook update show up in Twitter can be annoying for your Twitter followers when they realise that you’re update is cut-short and when clicked upon only carries a few more words – keep this up and you’re Twitter follower count will soon dissipate. Even worse is when the message itself is cut-short and holds an embedded link to a blog/product/service page – it’s unnecessary and you can hardly blame someone for NOT clicking when you have cut-short the message as to why they should clickthough in the first place!
Facebook offers a more homely social encounter – a bit like Mum’s cooking without the verbals – it can make use of images, help you create events, offer realtime questions in visual bar graphs, and, more importantly, it creates conversations in a simple to read format. In short, Facebook offers much more than straight to the point update functionality. Facebook has layers!
Do they sound similar ?
Now answer yourself this question. Why would you treat them both with disdain by offering the exact same post/update to both platforms?
I’m talking from experience because in a previous life we updated our Twitter feed from our Facebook profile automatically. The interaction that we once enjoyed on Twitter soon faded when we used the site as it was intended to be used.
If you want the most from both Twitter or Facebook then treat them seperately and you’ll soon experience the real potential that both of these mammoth social sites have to offer.
