It really is mind-boggling. Professional communicators should know better. Social media “gurus” should know better. Those Public Relations professionals? They should know better too. Yet sometimes they don’t.
What am I yammering about?
Posting identical updates across platforms automatically and simultaneously.
I get it. You’re busy. You’ve seemingly got a thousand things to do today and a thousand places to be at once. And a dozen statuses to update on a dozen platforms – more if you’re handling client accounts. I get it.
Still. It’s no excuse for laziness. Nothing. And I mean NOTHING, is more heinous, more disrespectful to your audience, nothing screams I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU more than when you use an application like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to post the same status update on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and wherever else you’re trying to broadcast to your audience online, at the same time. After all, you’ve implemented all kinds of genius social media strategy to turn your Facebook fans into Twitter followers into Foursquare checker-inners so you can broadcast the same message on different channels anyway. So why should I, the reader, have to read “Hey, check out my über crazy-good social media marketing post” on Facebook only to check into my Twitter feed 30 seconds later to see the same post? Do you believe that’s adding value and makes me want to keep being your fan or follower?
OK, scratch that. Actually, there is something more heinous than cross-posting. Connect-my-dots posting is worse.
When you post a link on Facebook to that über crazy-good marketing post on your company website and use a social media app to simultaneously post another, different link to that Facebook post on Twitter, you’re requiring your readers to click twice to arrive to the one place you wanted to send them to, and could have just sent them to.
What on earth are you thinking? Yes, I get it, clicking is easy. Yes, I get it, Facebook integrated itself with Twitter like that to seem like they are making life simpler for you all the while driving traffic to them. But not only does the data show your audience won’t click twice often, it’s also the internet equivalent of flipping your audience the bird. It’s not good communicating. It’s not marketing. It’s not effective. It’s not efficient. It’s just down right lazy and disrespectful. It’s not going to win you Facebook fans or Twitter followers. So I beg you. Just stop. Please.
The solution is simply. Really. Just build one link on each platform you choose to use that takes me to whichever page you’re trying to get me to go. Please don’t make me connect your dots. That’s not my job as your reader. You should be making it easy for me to read your content. And you should be enticing me to want to click your link with something clever, creative and alluring. You should also be checking in with me to make sure you’re doing it right. That’s the engagement part of this whole social media thingy.
