With the upsurge in productivity tools such as Hootsuite and Seesmic we can now update multiple Social Media accounts in one fell swoop. Write a sentence with a link and use it for your Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin profiles. Technology allows us to do this, but does this means we have to?
There are various reasons to never ever produce the same copy for all your social media platforms. One can argue that even strategy may need a different take and angle. Balancing consistency for a memorable message with an understanding of the different audiences is key. Dan Zarrella, consistently studying the most shareable and retweetable content has come up with great data on the right content for our social media. According to him,
Facebook audience (audience as every individual using Facebook at that very moment in time) is looking forward to light content, videos, funny stuff, or anecdotes and interesting facts more related to pub talks than essays. All the techy stuff that gets RT and shared on Twitter doesn’t actually have a big uptake on Facebook, where it is rather ignored.
Twitter is very different. Its audience is information hungry, early adopters, smart individuals that can face complicated information on the spot (or save for later with Delicious or Instapaper). On Twitter, software, apps, gadgets and ebooks work better than videos and images.
As a general rule, never produce copy and push it to all of the platforms. Instead, spend a while looking at the conversations of your target audience in every scenario to give you some insight into the right content. Then, try your hand out with some tweets, posts or status udpates and analyse the content that gets liked and shared the most and produce more of it. Discard the other. Doing otherwise just won’t work and is a ticket to quitting. In addition, never trust those who tell you to “forget strategy and participate in the conversation”. That is just an insane cliché for all those who don’t understand Social Media. Never drop the brief.
Soon you will realise how your Twitter activity and your Facebook marketing part ways to talk to different people, at different times of the day and about different angles of your product or service.
About The Author
Xavi Izaguirre
Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library as a Social Media Analyst, helping brands and agencies identify key influencers online and devising best outreach strategies. With a background in traditional marcoms, Xavier has also completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London and carries out social media and online marketing consultancy work as a freelancer.
Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre