I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love technology. I do, but sometimes automation goes a step too far. Take Twitter and Facebook integration for example. There’s a whole bunch of people who’ve added applications to their Facebook profiles so that what they tweet shows up as their Facebook status. I’m not a fan.
But there is one integration I think can work and that’s between a Facebook business Page and Twitter. The setup only takes a few minutes and works well to deliver the content shared on a Page to a Twitter profile. Here’s a short video that explains the setup process.
The reason I’m not a fan of tweets becoming status updates is that what is said in a tweet usually has a context. For example, an @ reply is a direct communication to another Twitter user and often relates to a previous tweet. Put that @ reply onto your personal profile and it loses its context and quickly turns into meaningless noise. Your signal to noise ratio degrades quickly and people become deaf to your message.
The same is not usually the case when a Page feeds to a Twitter profile. An update on a Facebook Page is always new material, a mini blog post if you like. It’s generally designed as a conversation starter, not as the body of the conversation, which takes place within the comments attached to the post.
In my view automation within a social media environment is best adopted slowly and only after careful consideration. Relying too heavily on automation turns social media into old media; a means for thrusting a sales pitch onto a disinterested audience. And if that’s what you’re hoping to achieve it might be better to look for another platform.
