A colleague is working on a couple of corporate Facebook fan pages. She suggested we add the company’s Twitter feed to the fan pages so the tweets would show there. I replied that I didn’t think it was a good idea.
Many people would opine it’s not a good idea to do this because of duplicate content concerns. I disagree with this argument. I believe there are many on Facebook who don’t do Twitter. There are probably some on Twitter who don’t do Facebook, too. There is also the possibility that if someone were on both services, they may not follow you on one or the other. So, I think it’s OK to post the same content in both places.
My reason for not wanting to post on Facebook via the Twitter application is illustrated in the image below:
These are identically worded links on Facebook to the same blog post. The bottom one was entered first on Twitter and fed to Facebook via the Twitter application. The top one is the exact same text (I copied and pasted) but entered via Facebook’s web interface.
Notice the difference
The one entered on Facebook’s web site has a nice thumbnail, the title of the post in bold along with the name of the blog and a short excerpt from the first lines of the post. It’s very nice and catches the eye much better then the link on the bottom.
If you enter your link through Tweetdeck (or similar socmed app) the Facebook link will also appear like the bottom one in the example.
Think about it
Your Facebook fans may have updates from hundreds of friends and other fan pages. If you can do something to make your link stand out, why not do it? Even if you post the exact same text by copying and pasting as I did in the examples above, the effort brings a much better result.
What do you think?
Is it OK to port your tweets to your Facebook page? Why or why not?
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, Elmer. I have similar issues with linking Facebook to Twitter. I’ve always been a big advocate of keeping the platforms separate, and I find it so annoying to see a Tweet like:
“Google and Yahoo! Show Growth Over 2010 by… http://www.bit.ly”
The important party of the headline is cut off since Facebook doesn’t have the 140-limitations, and what’s worse is that the shortened link doesn’t go to the article, it goes to Facebook! So if I’m interested in the topic, I have to click the link, get sent to Facebook, then read the remainder of the headline to make sure I’m interested, then click to the actual article.
This has become even more annoying as the platforms continue to intertwine, but I’m a bit old fashioned and prefer to update each separately, with content appropriate for each audience.
Heidi – Thanks for stopping by. You are quite right to point out that Facebook doesn’t have the 140-character limitation Twitter does. That’s another good reason to post separately.
Elmer,
Good point. I’m in charge of social media for the newsroom of a metro daily paper. While most users like the convenience of being able to get two posts for the sweat of one, there are way too many pitfalls to do so as standard practice.
The biggest problem I see is the use of Twitter hashtags. Because we target most of our posts to users in our metro region, almost all of our Twitter messages include a hashtag. But hashtags are meaningless — if not downright infuriating — to Facebook users.
While I prefer using Facebook’s interface to post updates, sometimes I will post them from TweetDeck if there is nothing to be gained by going through Facebook. However, I always make sure to copy the message and then resend it to Facebook, removing the hashtags and spelling out the name of the metro area so that our fans aren’t left scratching their heads in confusion.
Bryan – Thanks for the tips.
You bring up an excellent point here. Hashtags are quite useful to Twitter users to help them find information or track conversations quickly and efficiently. To those on Facebook they are quite useless.
I also use TweetDeck and it find it quite good for tracking multiple Twitter accounts, and to make the occasional update to Facebook. If not posting a link, I will often use Tweetdeck to update my Facebook.
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