The #SMsceptic: The dangers of integrating and automating social media accounts

Picture the scene…

You dabble in social media for your [blank] (replace with website(s)/affiliate project(s)/company/clients or whatever’s applicable), making use of the main and most popular social networking sites: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and possibly even the brand new Google+.

You’re a busy person. Maybe you’re in charge of all the offline marketing. Or maybe you do SEO and PPC as well. So fitting in the social media work – something that would ideally need to be monitored on an on-going basis – seems like a tedious and time-consuming task.

(…Or maybe you’re just unapologetically lazy, who knows…)

So when you find out that you can integrate all of the various accounts together and can automate them through just one of them, it sounds like a dream come true. Post a tweet and it also appears on Facebook and LinkedIn. Boom.

Of course, integrating and automating social media accounts in this way can be godsend and a lifesaver for the busy individual. But what do you lose by doing so? Are there any risks involved? Is it really just worth going to the effort of logging into each account and posting separately, which might take slightly longer but ultimately have a greater effect and impact?

I’ll admit that I’ve not experimented or played around with every single possibility and outcome (I do personally prefer to post separately on each account), but the most popular way seems to be automating one’s tweets, so that Twitter is the main account and its tweets automatically appear as Facebook and LinkedIn status updates. While this may seem good and harmless on the surface, there are some downsides to venturing down the integration/automation path…

Lost in tw-anslation

Here are the five biggest observations I’ve noticed so far, where social media integration and automation has not worked out so well:

1. Tweets on LinkedIn: personal posts on a professional page

Perhaps one of the biggest sins I see committed with social media integration is when all of an individual’s tweets – both professional and personal – also appear on their LinkedIn page, a social network which is particularly more formal and professional than Twitter and Facebook. LinkedIn is great for talking about work-related and industry goings-on, but not so much when it comes to your weekend plans, the subsequent hangover or your thoughts on reality TV shows…

There’s the option to pick and choose which tweets you want to show on LinkedIn, by tagging tweets with “#in” (note: make sure that your Twitter settings on LinkedIn are configured accordingly). That way, your personal tweets can stay Twitter-based, whilst your more professional tweets can feature on LinkedIn and be presented to your more professional acquaintances.

2. Tweets on LinkedIn & Facebook: lost potential for longer posts

With Twitter’s 140 character limit, tweets will feature on Facebook and LinkedIn at the same length. However, LinkedIn and Facebook allow more room in their status updates than Twitter, so in this case, it may be worthwhile updating separately on those sites.

Arguably, short may be sweet, but sometimes the message can be lost when trying to squeeze it into the tight confines of a tweet. In which case, it may be best to type a longer, more in-depth message when posting to Facebook and LinkedIn, especially if it means avoiding abbreviations, trimmed words or txt speak.

3. Tweets on LinkedIn & Facebook: lost potential with links

While we’re on the subject – due to Twitter’s character limit restrictions, the platform thrives and relies on URL shorteners such as bit.ly and tinyurl.com. While these are great on Twitter for fitting more into the message, with the shortened URL taking up less character space than perhaps the lengthy original, when a tweet appears on Facebook and LinkedIn, the link will not be “attached” to the status update.

What does this mean? When sharing a link on Facebook and LinkedIn, you have the option to “attach” a link, which will show its title, a snippet (as its description) and an associated image (which you can usually choose, based on the page’s content). Otherwise, the alternative is just the written text link, as you would see it on Twitter. Although not the end of the world (after all, the link will still work), the description and image might help to make it more noticeable amongst all the other updates showing up on someone’s News Feed. You will be able to write a lengthier description of your own to go with the link, too.

4. LinkedIn & Facebook status updates on Twitter: the message is cut

In point #2, the issue was with losing potential with short tweets. This time, it’s the opposite: updating on either Facebook or LinkedIn and integrating it so that it automatically tweets on your behalf could mean that the message is cut, if it’s longer than a particular length (probably about 120 characters – maximum tweet length with a shortened URL).

Having a message that stops partway through a tweet with a “…” and a shortened link to either LinkedIn or Facebook to read the rest is pretty tacky-looking, I’m sure you’ll agr…

5. When integrating accounts, check all profiles

Of course, one of the most important things to remember is to check to see how an automated tweet/update looks on the other platforms. Just because you only have to update one site, doesn’t mean you should completely ignore the rest of them. Be sure to check the others, in case you encounter any of the above problems or something else entirely, which could affect your marketing efforts, even if only slightly – after all, everything counts.

[Robot vs. laptop image credit: Đ…olo]

2 Comments

  • Nonentity

    July 21, 2011 at 3:36 pm Reply

    Great post, Completely agree with everything mentioned here.

    A few other things to add: If you’re posting from Facebook/LinkedIn to Twitter or vice versa – then you’re missing out on using network specific features Like Hash tags or mentions on Facebook.

    Regarding No.3 – Some tools like Hootsuite will allow you to post to multiple networks at once and attach the link information to Facebook and Linked In up dates.

    Similar to No.1 the Facebook app – Selective Tweets- Allows you to only post tweets that have #FB in them, again ensuring you only post what you want to Facebook.

    Personally I prefer to use a tool like Hootsuite or Seesmic to post to multiple (or individual) networks.

    Thanks for the good read!

    • Steve

      July 21, 2011 at 4:39 pm Reply

      Hi Ben/Nonentity, thanks for the comment.

      Very true about hashtags and mentions. In fact, when it’s Twitter -> Facebook and there are hashtags in the tweet, I’ve seen a few FB users – who aren’t Twitter users – confused by their presence and purpose.

      Thanks for the info regarding HootSuite and Selective Tweets. I currently use the former but only for Twitter, i.e. I’ve not attached any Facebook accounts to it – maybe I should start?

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