Are You Cheating on Facebook?
Anyone who has ever run an online marketing campaign can tell you that it takes time. They will likely also tell you that any application that displays their posts in multiple places with one click simplifies their life.
There are several tools that allow you to cross-feed your posts between Twitter and Facebook. However, most marketers forget that these two applications have their own etiquette and that readers can tell when you’re cheating.
The most obvious giveaways that you are cross feeding your Twitter posts to Facebook are the ones that carry symbols specific to Twitter. These include @ and #. The @ symbol is the preamble to a Twitter user’s handle. For instance, mine is @JustTheFAQs. (I also tweet under @MaAnnaS for my book, The Sage Age.)
The # symbol is called a hashtag and places the words that follow it into categories that can be searched on HashTag.org http://hashtags.org/ Although that’s a great way to find folks tweeting on topics that interest you, they serve no purpose on Facebook.
Another sure sign that you are posting to Facebook from Twitter are the letters RT, which in Twitter shorthand stand for “re-tweet.” The RT letters are usually followed by the @ sign and the user’s handle. Altogether it signifies that you are relaying info originally posted by someone else.
While using these cross-feed applications may make your life easier, they may also make your Facebook friends feel like they are reading your Twitter leftovers. If you want to make a real impact on Facebook, follow the etiquette for that site. At the very least, consider stop cross-feeding posts that contain @, # and RT.
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Dana,
Is this a bad thing? I use RT to give credit to the originator rather than make it look like it was my quote story etc.
I thought it was supposed to be time saving to have things linked up so when you post in one place it’s distributed. But according to what you’re saying here, it’s viewed negatively by FB friends if you read something interesting on Twitter and are passing it on so your FB friends can benefit also?
@replies do not come thru FB, correct? And I do not even know how to use hashtags. I was looking at it as helpful to pass things on since we have some different people on different sites. Maybe others have said this but it’s the first time I’ve heard it. Thanks!
Thanks for your comment Dana. Lots of marketing folks do espouse porting your social media posts, and even your blog posts, back and forth between all of your sites as a way to efficiently make use of your marketing time. Twitter users don’t seem to mind, but Facebook users are less tolerant of the practice.
Giving credit for material that’s repeated is a great thing, it’s just that Facebook users don’t know who @SoAndSo is. You’re correct that @replies don’t port to Facebook, and I’m sorry I wasn’t clear about the way they are used. I wanted to point out things like the example above, which was referring to people by their Twitter handle instead of their name.
It is helpful to share the same information on different sites. I do it all the time, but if the original info is on Twitter, I remove any Tweet-speak before sharing it with my Facebook friends.
When using social media as part of a marketing strategy, most folks opt to feed from Twitter to Facebook, since the character limit is shorter on Twitter. If folks are following you on both Twitter and Facebook, they are seeing the same info twice, and rarely get fresh material on Facebook. And, if they are only following you on Facebook, they’ll catch on very quickly that your posts are coming from elsewhere, giving the impression that you’re not actually participating in the Facebook community.
The main point is, if you make losts of posts marked with Twitter-speak and frequently (or always) feed them to Facebook, yet make few fresh Facebook posts, folks are going to catch on that your taking a shortcut and not taking the time to talk to them “in person” so to speak. If you only cross-feed those Twitter-speak marked posts occasionally, and make as many or more “fresh” posts on Facebook, your followers probably won’t mind so much.
Thanks! I’ve been sharing articles w/ share button or quotes, my blog posts etc. on FB first. Then I go to Twitter if its something I also want to share there as well and post. Then I go back to FB and delete the twitter one from my profile.
Then if I see something on Twitter I RT and send it through. Maybe it’s not the best way but I like the way FB links the article and picture as opposed to just a link and a few words allowed on Twitter. And I like to be original as much as possible and pass on great info to help people.
I do understand what you’re saying about recycled info. Can you just clarify one thing please. If you want to pass on an entry from Twitter do you RT or do you remove that and the name and send it through with just your name? Still learning the ropes with all this social media
Thanks for the help!
I usually copy and paste the Twitter info over to Facebook and thank the person by name for posting, instead of using their Twitter handle. If they have an account on Facebook, then I use their Facebook name, so others can find them. If they don’t have a Facebook account, I use just their first name. Hope that helps.
Makes sense. Thanks!