I recently noticed that there are still companies out there that link their Facebook to their Twitter account. In other words: they’ve set it up that way that when they post something on their Facebook Page, it is also automatically tweeted via their Twitter account.
This irritated me so much that I started asking companies to unlink their accounts (of course in a very friendly way:D). To my surprise I often received the question “Why?”, meaning that they see no harm. Of course from a pratical point of view it saves time: you only post on one channel, and another channel is automatically filled with content. However there are plenty of reasons against it:
1. Facebook & Twitter are completely different channels
First of all Facebook is a social network: in general people connect with people they know like friends, family, colleagues. Twitter is defined as social media, and you don’t necessarily know the people that you are following meaning that in most cases you follow “interest based”. Both Facebook & Twitter contain multi content but for Facebook it’s more visual, and for Twitter more text based with a limit of 140 characters (which is already a part of the issue for automation).
The audience on Facebook & Twitter is not the same (though there will always be some overlap), and you will also see that people use both channels differently: Twitter is the most popular platform to directly get in touch with a company & to publicly address a complaint or ask questions. Of course this can also be done via Facebook but it’s less common: people ‘liked’ a fan page & will interact with the posts of a company by liking, sharing & commenting.
2. It looks bad
When you post pictures on Facebook people get to see the message above on Twitter which in fact says nothing. If you post a lot pictures = a lot of tweets like this 🙁 Often you’ll also get Tweets with only a Facebook link in it and no text at all, or text with a link but cut off in the middle of the sentence which really doesn’t look professional at all but comes from the fact that on Facebook you can post approximately 5000 characters versus only 140 on Twitter.
3. Why have 2 channels if your message is the same?
People that like your Page on Facebook & also follow you on Twitter have different expectations per platform. You’re lucky when they showed their interest in your brand on these 2 channels, but you are very likely to loose them if the content is identical.
Now for the onces that I’ve convinced, here’s where you can unlink your Facebook & Twitter: https://www.facebook.com/twitter/
Questions or remarks? Please don’t hesitate to leave a reply or get in touch with me directly via kel@sobuzzy.be.