Many people who fell prey to the Auto-feed short-cut introduced by Facebook found that it did much more harm than good. And it’s understandable why they did it: how can you have time for social media, when you struggle with creating consistent, relevant blog content?
While it may have saved time initially, there were costs in the long run. The same is true for auto-feeds to LinkedIn, Twitter, and all the other social media sites. Although this seems like a good idea, it may do you more harm than good.
Here are 4 reasons why you should NOT automatically feed your blog posts into these social media sites:
1. You cannot personalize the content.
If you want to make your status updates more appealing, post it in the form of a question and ask others to comment. You are more likely to get fans to “like” your post, comment and share.
2. You cannot “tag” others in your status updates.
This goes hand-in-hand with personalizing your status update. If the content is appropriate for them or their pages, “tag” them in. Be sensitive, though, as it will show on your feed as well as theirs.
3. You cannot customize the content for each social media audience.
When writing blog content, you must keep your readers’ needs and expectations in mind. The same is true for social media: Each network is different. While the blog post content may appeal to all the audiences, the formality and tone used to introduce it will vary greatly.
4. You cannot keep the content fresh.
Those that use the auto-feed are re-hashing material to all of the social media sites. If you have folks that are following you on multiple networks, they will see the same headline, over and over, and are likely to ignore you.
Remember, relevant content with keywords and hashtags are essential when posting to your status updates on your social media sites. Don’t forget to use keyword hash tags, especially on Twitter. And when “tweeting,” capitalize your phrases: #SocialMediaTips #NoAutoFeeds
This is an excerpt of one of most highly viewed topics on Writing on the Web. The full post was written by Christine Buffaloe, of Serenity Virtual Assistant Services, a great resource for a wide range of administrative support services specializing in social media, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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