Mass Social Updates: Convenient, but Effective?
I am not a fan of syndicated updates from brands – whether they’re from a third-party vendor such as Ping.FM, or integrated within your existing Facebook/Twitter profiles. We’re discussing the situation when an update is entered in one place and it posts that same message across all of the networks connected to that service. Don’t get me wrong, there will always be a use for those in my social media mix. But when syndicated posts become thoughtlessly automatic, I question their effectiveness
for brands.
I have many concerns, but here’s my biggest: Each social network has different parameters, a different personality, and in most cases, a different audience. To entice your customers/prospects to take time to engage with your brand, you need to make sure you’re approaching them the right way. Think about it from a traditional media standpoint – would you take a newspaper ad and run it as-is for a TV commercial? That’s exactly how it is with new media. You need the appropriate message and delivery to catch your audience’s attention and to move them
to engagement.
Facebook offers a lot of opportunities for brands to engage people. Page updates can incorporate multi-media attachments (images, video, links) and can be tagged to include hot links to people’s profiles, events or other pages/groups within Facebook. This gives brands the platform to tell a rich story with extra visuals.
Conversely, Twitter’s tweets are short and much less inclusive of multi-media. Sure, you can add links to images and video, but they count as part of your 140 character limit. Twitter also incorporates @replies and #hashtags to help people understand the context of the message and who you’re talking to/about.
Bulk-messaging both Facebook and Twitter will often lead to failures in each channel. Messages created for Facebook are typically too long for Twitter and get cut off. Twitter updates that are pulled into Facebook are usually bland because they’re missing the additional content. How are either of those scenarios going to be encouraging to a customer who likes your Page or follows your brand on Twitter?
And one more thing. If you’re using syndicated posts to save time, are you remembering to follow up with the responses people may have posted in both mediums?
All I’m saying is that the point of social media is to engage and be interactive. Cutting corners through regular update syndication can potentially derail the efforts you’re making. What do you think?
13 May 2010 | Brandon_Sheley Said:
I'm a fan of ping.fm, I've used it for a few years now.
I like it because I was able to spend an afternoon and setup 20+ accounts across all networks, and I can now post an update and it's sent everywhere.
The reason I like it is because it's a great way to get a new post indexed in the search engines.
13 May 2010 | AlissaSheley Said:
I think there's big a difference between utilizing syndicated updates personally versus for a brand. When you're doing it on your own behalf, your involvement in social media is completely up to you and the goals you have. Getting engagement from your friends may not be a priority, but for a brand, I think it is.
It's great to get your posts indexed in search engines, but if you're not responding and engaging customers and potential customers when they comment, you're leaving opportunity on the table. The updates will be indexed by search engines whether you post them individually or in mass.
Thanks for commenting!
13 May 2010 | Ralph Rumill Said:
Great Post!! I think it goes back to WHAT IS SPAM or OVERKILL in marketing. The methods I use between Twitter, FB, and Ping.fm some don't agree with. I use my personal accounts for both BRANDING me and my biz content. I try to be slective on what and where I share each post, but sometimes I want to reach EVERYBODY. I think “new media” is still evolving out of embryo stage and nothing is CONCRETE in personality yet. Best practices are still being declared and created. I could go on and on, but I love this topic.
13 May 2010 | AlissaSheley Said:
Thanks for commenting, Ralph! I completely agree that social media is still so new, no one out there is an expert. It's certainly a topic that I enjoy talking about though!
17 May 2010 | bdcheung Said:
I think a lot depends on the brand's strategy. A hub-and-spoke approach, centralized around a Facebook page, blog, YouTube channel, etc. can have a single item of content syndicated across a number of channels that all link back to the hub and this can be successful.
But if a brand is adopting a pitchfork-type strategy, where one message is separately carried across a number of channels without any cross-talk, then simple syndication will lead to all the problems you've identified.
Thanks for the insight!
- Brian Cheung
http://bridea.wordpress.com/
17 May 2010 | AlissaSheley Said:
Good point, Brian. There are certainly ways that it can be done effectively, they're just not utilized as often as I'd like to see. Thanks for commenting!
17 May 2010 | Mass Social Media Status Updating | Kansas City Social Media: K2Media Said:
[...] friend Alissa Sheley at Jones Huyett Partners in Topeka posted about this very topic recently. She and I share the same opinion about these mass updaters. Alissa said, “I have [...]