The Case Against Linking Twitter & Facebook Fan Pages
May 29, 2011 7 Comments
I understand why an organization would link their Facebook Fan page with their Twitter account to share updates. Time and staff are limited. It’s easier to update once and let the auto-posting magic take over. In my humble opinion, this is not a best practice. I think Facebook and Twitter are two different beasts and should be treated as such. Here’s a few reasons why:
1. It’s obvious you didn’t write for this platform so you look kind of lazy: Posts sent from Twitter to Facebook have usernames (@someone) and hashtags (#something) that are useless and mean nothing to Facebook. Facebook posts are usually too long for Twitter, so they end up with that “fb.me” link back to the Facebook page. If you want visitors to take a certain action (say visit your website), why make them go to Facebook in between? You’ll lose some percentage along the way.
2. You are losing impressions if you post from Twitter to Facebook: I’ve been seeing this in my Wall stream lately: “See XX more posts from Twitter.” That means I have to take an action (click) to view these posts. If the last few Tweets sent to my Facebook News stream before this one are not so engaging, I may not click that link at all. The post you carefully crafted for Twitter may not be viewed by many of your Facebook Fans simply because it came from Twitter.
Twitter posts are collapsed by Facebook
You are also likely losing impressions by not updating manually because of EdgeRank (the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what to show in News feeds). You’ll get a lower EdgeRank score when using third-party applications to post to Facebook (more on EdgeRank here and here).
3. Facebook to Twitter often leaves out important info: One organization I’m a big fan of recently posted on Facebook to “view the Note below” for info on a new feature on their website. But after it was auto-posted to Twitter, there was no link included back to the Note on Facebook. After they created the Note, it was automatically posted to their Facebook Wall. In a separate status update they instructed to look “below” to read the Note. But only the second update made it to Twitter and there was no “below” to read (except other people’s Tweets). Important note: most people read your Facebook status updates on their News feed and not your Fan page (check your Facebook Insights to see the difference between your Impressions versus Wall visits), so if you refer to something “below” it might not make much sense even on Facebook.
4. You lose the power of tagging: One great way to both get the word out about your page and be a good social media neighbor is to tag other people & organizations in your Twitter and Facebook updates. Since they use different formats, posting from one to the other is not compatible for tagging. On Facebook, all those Twitter “@” tags don’t work and look kind of silly. On Twitter, the tagged name may not display the way you may have preferred and will often use up more of your 140 characters than needed. When auto-posting, you can’t create these important links to other Twitter accounts that share info and help grow your followers.
5. You might accidentally do this:
Why you shouldn't link Facebook updates to Twitter!
Sounds pretty tasty up until the “Flash Fried Baby!” There is a good chance the next word was “Spinach” but we can’t be sure unless we click-through. I’m guessing no one wants to accidentally send out a message like this to their followers and fans. And they certainly don’t want a local newspaper writing about it on their blog: Why Restaurants Shouldn’t Cross-Post From Facebook to Twitter by Robin Wheeler @ RFT
Do you have a different opinion on linking Twitter and Facebook? Are there other good points I didn’t mention? Let me know about it in the comments.
Well spoken, sir. I absolutely hate seeing tweets on Facebook unless it’s the occasional quick note utilizing the #fb hashtag switch. The process of crafting the right message is so different for each platform that it still amazes me when common sense isn’t enough to stop people from automatically cross-posting.
Do you have insights on cross-posting/cross-promotion for Tumblr, Posterous, and other up-and-comers? (possibly a subject for a companion post, I guess)
Daniel – thanks for leaving your comments. I also use the #fb tag on occasion when I want to share from Twitter to Facebook. That works well on general tweets that are not to a specific person or with hashtags or links. Otherwise I prefer to post manually to both so I can take advantage of the unique features each social network offers.
Again just In my humble opinion, it certainly makes sense to promote your blog posts to Twitter and Facebook, whether from WordPress, Movable Type, Blogger or the newer platforms like Tumblr or Posterous. For this blog I take advantage of the sharing options build into WordPress.com. For a another blog I manage, I use Hootsuite to push to Twitter and the RSS Graffiti app to automatically post to Facebook. As you may guess, I’d never be in favor of automatically posting from a blog to Twitter and then automatically to Facebook (or vice-versa). A good Facebook app like RSS Graffiti brings over the blog title, first 100 characters or so from each post and a thumbnail image if one is available. If I couldn’t rely on the app to bring all that info over however, I’d go back to manually posting. To me having that content (especially the image) is critical as it’s sent out into the Wall stream of my organization’s Fan page followers. There is a lot of competition in that Wall stream and anything that helps you get noticed is worth the effort.
I guess across all these networks my point is don’t try and take the easy way out. If you do, you are not maximizing the potential of each to engage your audience.
Great points. Definitely agree that is a bad practice to link Twitter & Facebook.
One thing I see over and over again when Facebook & Twitter pages are linked is an update will be posted on Facebook consisting of a sentence or two and then when the update is posted on Twitter it will be the beginning of the update and a link to view the last few words of whatever message it was. It is hugely frustrating when after waiting for the Facebook page to load over a mobile network all you needed to see was a few words.
Treat each platform as the different medium of communication it is.
Mike – YES, I hate when you click over to a Facebook link and turns out to only be a few words that were truncated! I also use the Twitter app for iPhone and usually when I click through on a “fb.me” link it just hangs and I nothing loads. I’ve pretty much just stopped clicking on those links.
Thanks for leaving your comments.
Thank you for this post Dale – I recently linked my accounts so that I only post once to save me time but it doesn’t feel right so I googled to seek advice on the topic and your insights and follow up comments are just what I needed – I’m reverting back to keeping them seperate ASAP!!
Des – My strong opinion is really directed to organizations who are on Twitter and Facebook. I wouldn’t link my personal accounts but wasn’t trying to make a statement about that. All the same things that can go wrong for an organization or business can go wrong for an individual, so it’s probably a good idea to treat them separately. Now if we want to talk about prolific Tweeters who send every update to their LinkedIn page – not a fan of that!
Tweetdeck is useful because you can simply choose whether your messages/info go in a tweet or facebook or both and it speeds the whole process of doing updates if you are on the move.
I would prefer using tweetdeck rather than linking the accounts – it just saves time.