“I don’t have time for Facebook and Twitter”
Social media is free, but what’s the catch? Time. We only have so much time to spend putting our message out there, but we don’t want to limit how many people can hear what we have to say. This problem comes up in many ways, but the simplest is the dichotomy between Facebook and Twitter. Many folks decide to spend the bulk of their social time on one or the other, with relatively few people using both. If Google Buzz catches fire, this fragmentation might only increase. What’s a marketer to do?
Image by luc legay via Flickr
Let’s face it. There’s no real difference between “friends” and “followers,” nor between “”status updates” and “tweets.” And why would you decide to spend all your precious social media time updating one venue and not the other, if your customers use both of them? But how can you double the amount of time you spend in social media updating both?
You don’t have to. I decided that I prefer Twitter to Facebook so I have every tweet I send out mirrored as my Facebook status. And I do the same thing on LinkedIn. I haven’t taken the plunge on Google Buzz yet, but I’ll probably do the same thing there, also.
If someone wants to see what I am up to, they can use their favorite method to keep up and I only have to update once. I know people using FriendFeed to accomplish the same thing. In each of your social media lives, you can set up these mirrors to make sure that your customers can keep up no matter what network they are in, while you only need to update once.
Now, I find even though I update in only one place, that I still have trouble making time for more than a few tweets a day, but there isn’t anything I can do to help with that.
Mike is an expert in search marketing, search technology, social media, publishing, text analytics, and web metrics, who regularly makes speaking appearances.
Mike’s previous appearances include Text Analytics World, Rutgers Business School, SEMRush webinar, ClickZ Live.
Mike also founded and writes for Biznology, is the co-author of Outside-In Marketing (with James Mathewson) and the best-selling Search Engine Marketing, Inc. (now in its 3rd edition, and sole author of Do It Wrong Quickly, named by the Miami Herald as one of the 11 best business books of 2007.
I think social media is a fantastic marketing tool but I do not think there is a single “package for everyone” Different types of business may not want to “tweet” all day whereas others might need to in order to capture their audiance. phoenix homes for sale
Ok but you never said HOW you choose to do this……or do you use Friend Feed?
And I dont see on FriendFeed how it updates/connects to LinkedIn….could you finish out the topic please?
i agree, i like social media but i don’t love it, i’m very strict about the amount of time that i spend on facebook and twitter and i have very specific goals for what i want to achieve
Sorry, Benjamin. You can ask Facebook to mirror your tweets: http://www.facebook.com/twitter/
and you can ask LinkedIn to do the same: http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/11/09/allen-blue-twitter-and-linkedin-go-together-like-peanut-butter-and-chocolate/
Also Benjamin, if you don’t want to psot all your tweets to Facebook, I found this: http://pitbullmarketing.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/cool-way-to-post-your-tweets-to-your-facebook-status/
It all depends on your goal, who the audience is, and if they find your content valuable. All these services could do with more people who ask themselves the “so what” question before they hit the submit button. No need to tweet at all for anyone struggling to answer the question “why am I doing this” about their posts either (Not the situation on this blog).
In most cases I see different audiences on each service and consider it both slightly rude and definitely ineffective to push the same message to all services. Posting an internet marketing link to a bunch of family members on my Facebook profile is the same thing, in my world, as crying wolf. Pretty soon they just turn you off.
One way to stay sane while altering your messaging on the fly is to learn to use ping.fm or hello.txt – then you can quickly put the right update in front of the group likely to be most receptive.
I feed all my tweets into Facebook but not into LinkedIn.
Tweets sometimes include personal information that has no business being in LinkedIn because of the nature of the site. (Example: “Does anybody know how to get an ink stain out of a carpet?”)
A great tool to use for twitter is twaitter or hootsuite which allows you to schedule your tweets all at once. So that you can forget about them for days or weeks at a time. I didn’t know about FriendFeed and I will use that in the future to update both my twitter and facebook page at the same time.
You’re right Joan, but there is a solution for that. You can add a hash tag to the tweets that you want shown on LinkedIn and only those will be posted. Check it out: http://mashable.com/2009/11/09/twitter-linkedin-sync/
I feed all my tweets into Facebook but not into LinkedIn.
Tweets sometimes include personal information that has no business being in LinkedIn because of the nature of the site. (Example: “Does anybody know how to get an ink stain out of a carpet?”)
Sometimes you have to make time … there are a lot of tools out there on the market that will allow you to update your social media networking accounts without having to even login. Tweetdeck is a good one as well that allows you to connect with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace.
Great article and Great comments. There is no – 1 size fits all solution and the Social media playing field changes daily. It depends on the desired effect – the industry, the demographic of the target, the list is endless. Having said this, there are certain tried and true methods and a minimum effort can produce great results – thanks for sharing yours.
Social marketing is indeed fantastic. Recently it enabled me to set up How To Treat Anxiety
Keeping all of your social networks in sync with each other is crucial but also make sure to spice it up a little, ya know, don’t make every single thing you do universal. Most things yes, but when it comes to certain topics that only pertain to one network than don’t post it on the others.
I think you have a justification there. I mean the way you get your Twitter messages at all other places it sure saves a lot of time and sometimes even saves you from working on the same thing at all the social sites which you are in.
Probably I would also work on these lines but I have one little doubt. Would it not give the impression that I am less ‘active’ in the other sites giving out my tweets at all other places ?
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