There are too many people who connect Twitter and Facebook together so all of their tweets are automatically posted on their Facebook accounts. Some people who connect their Twitter and Facebook accounts do so just to make sure something appears on their Facebook account every day while others think they are effectively systematizing their Facebook accounts.
However, if your Facebook and Twitter accounts are connected, all of your tweets will get posted on your Facebook account. If you are having a conversation with one of your friends or business partners on Twitter, all of the tweets you send during that conversation will also get posted to your Facebook account. The two problems that occur is that some people will not care for the conversation, but the bigger problem is that the people viewing your posts only get to see your part of the conversation. They do not get to see how your friend or business partner is responding to your tweets.
While it is possible to schedule posts, it is not possible to run a successful, systematized social network. It is possible to run a successful social network, but attempting to systematize that social network results in you sacrificing the most important thing about social media: being social. Instead of trying to systematize Facebook by posting your tweets to Facebook, you should create quality posts on Facebook (scheduled or at the moment) and respond to the people who respond to your Facebook posts.
Social media was created to dramatically increase the ability for people to communicate with others in the same town, city, state, country, continent, and world. In order to be successful on social media, we need to use social media for the reason it was created in the first place. Connecting Facebook and Twitter in an attempt to systematize your Facebook account is not the right way to get the job done.
Hi Marc, this is one of my biggest pet peeves! I can’t stand seeing tweets with the FB link, if I wanted to be on Facebook I’d be there, right? I have a few from my Facebook page do that and I have to check my settings again as I don’t like it. Great post!
It’s a pet peeve of mine too Lisa. People think they’re saving more time by sending the same posts to two social networks. I understand the logic of saving the time, but there are right ways and wrong ways to save time.
Hi Marc I love all your tips and tricks. Keep them coming. Do you still consider linking Facebook to Twitter a bad idea, as I noticed this blog was written in 2014.
Great question! I still consider it a bad idea because some people will be following you on both Twitter and Facebook. They want different posts that provide different value on each of those social networks. Moreover, each social network has its ideal posting frequency. While on Facebook most people advise four posts per day (I advise it too), on Twitter you can tweet once every 15 minutes and get away with it. I send over 100 tweets on Twitter every day but could never do 100 Facebook posts per day without annoying a lot of people.
Great article. I learned this the hard way a couple years ago. Now I only use Facebook for my longer thoughts–either in Notes (I then Tweet the link to the Notes article), or in my regular timeline if I’m responding to another article through my Disqus account. Keep the tips coming, they’re invaluable.
Thank you Jett. I am happy to hear that you like the tips. I think Twitter and Facebook should simply negate this option because many people don’t know the implications. If I send a tweet to @Username and we get into a conversation, Twitter users can follow that conversation, but on Facebook, it’s meaningless since people can’t follow the conversation.
I found this article to be very interesting since I do have my twitter account connected to Facebook and I am trying to decide whether to keep it connected or not. I actually hardly ever use Facebook at all. I mostly tweet about programming and I do have a few Facebook friends that are programmers and they occasionally will comment on my tweets in Facebook and it is for that reason I haven’t disconnected the two networks. It isn’t doing much for me since Facebook doesn’t bring any traffic to my blog so I might just disconnect it and stop bothering everyone with all my tweets. I wish there was a way to find better use of Facebook but I just can’t since I feel like a Facebook friend should be someone I actually know in person whereas it is easy to expand the number of Twitter followers by following people I don’t know but have common interests.
You can still share your content to your Facebook friends without having the two social networks connected. HootSuite allows you to schedule Facebook posts similarly to how they allow users to schedule their tweets. That way, you have more control over what goes on your Facebook account. You would have the option of only posting the content to your Facebook account that you know your friends will like and comment on.