A Social Media for Business "Don't"

This is why you should not auto-link your Facebook posts to Twitter.

Confused?

Yes, this is a tweet. On Twitter. Inviting you to follow them. On Twitter. This is the kind of absurdity that happens when you try to short cut social media for your business.

I’ve explained before why a business shouldn’t auto-link accounts, and every regular reader knows I was thrilled when Twitter and LinkedIn “broke up”. There are two glaring problems with this method of filling up your Twitter feed:

It’s obvious you aren’t REALLY present on Twitter. Every tweet links back to Facebook. The fb.me/####### gives it away.
You forget that when you invite people to come follow you on Twitter, that your Twitter followers are going to see the invite too…and isn’t that more than a little redundant? It merely calls attention to #1.

Ok, I lied. There’s a third thing that really bugs me about this strategy. If all you ever post on your Twitter account is the same as what is coming from your Facebook account, WHY would I want to go follow you on Twitter? And if you look at the Timeline for this account you can see very clearly that it’s all the same content as Facebook. There’s no engagement happening on Twitter. No conversations, no ReTweeting, no @ replies. It is not even a second thought because it appears to be forgotten. This is like sending a mute clone of yourself to a networking event.

I KNOW it’s tempting to do this because it’s easy and saves time, but the downside is the negative image you project to avid Twitter users. Doing social media for business takes time. You cannot “short cut” building relationships.

Just as I was finishing up this post, another tweet from fellow social media lover Julia Rosien popped up and I thought it was the perfect end for this post.

If your twitter streams looks more like a commercial than a conversation, you’re doing it wrong. #business

— Julia Rosien (@JuliaRosien) August 16, 2012