Friday, May 22, 2009

Your Social Networks Have Different Audiences!

I bet you $100 that your Facebook friends don't care what you are talking about on Twitter. They don't know what @username is and they don't know what #hashtag is.

I also bet that half of them have opted out of receiving your FB updates because you spam their Facebook lifestream with Twitter updates.

You have different audiences on your social networks - and your normal friends are not on the 15 different social networks that you are on! Play it safe and only post things on the social networking platform that fits that audience.

Sure sometimes you come across a great article or funny video that you want to share with everyone; it is probably suitable across all your audiences too. But once start using characters that are unfamiliar with non-Twitter folk, you become irrelevant to that viewer.

I am not a big advocate for posting the same msg I do on Twitter to go to my FB account. Half the time, I'm taking the time to find the @username that is associated to the artist or author to give kudos to the individual OR I'm using a #hashtag term to add my post category/conversation.

To me, that is a smart way to use Twitter - You engage more in conversation with individuals at such a small level (140 characters or less) that your followers can scan what you are saying and choose to engage or choose to ignore. Within 10 seconds, your posts will have dropped below the screen and out of their view.

This has been posted on twitter a few times over the past week (or at least this data flow concept). give credit to Louis Gray for this slide deck:



Fortunatley for me, I don't have too many friends that spam my Facebook lifestream with twitter feeds. I haven't blocked their posts out of respect :) But I'm not everyone, and I'm sure others may hide you eventually!

You MUST be aware of your audience within your social networks. If not, your message is diluted and ignored. Take advantage of your other networks by sharing or pitching information to them in a slightly different way.

Do you agree or disagree?

2 comments:

  1. I agree; there is a reason why twitter and facebook are separate sites/services!

    I recently started using selective twitter, which only posts to facebook any tweets that I append the #fb hashtag to. So far, I've used it once.

    >You engage more in conversation with individuals at such a small level (140 characters or less) that your followers can scan what you are saying and choose to engage or choose to ignore.
    I was explaining to a colleague today that I barely consider Twitter to be a social networking, because it is many 1:1 interactions, not a group interaction. I approach my conversations and posts completely differently from one service to the other.

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  2. Andrea -
    I have heard of selective twitter, but have not used it. I may share the same story on multiple platforms (twitter/FB) but I take the time to post the link to FB so a picture and story pops up (more interactive). With Twitter, you just have a link and nothing more. You have an interesting thought with Twitter hardly being a social networking platform. Have you checked out http://tweetchat.com? You can jump in a room to chat -- but you do spam your followers with posts not relevent to them.

    Good luck with your collegues!

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