Social Media Domination

Sigh... another industry expert telling you how to use or not use social media. This drives me crazy. There are a lot of consultants and experts in the industry who have opinions and a bully pulpit to sound off on. But are they steering your business in the right direction?

In a recent PC World article, Jason Snell advised:

If you've got a blog that's connected to your business, you can use a service such as TwitterFeed to directly channel your new blog posts into Twitter posts. Sounds nifty, doesn't it? Well, don't do it. Your business's primary Twitter feed ought to be hand-fed. If you publish a flood of impersonal links, your Twitter account will just seem like a faceless promotion machine.

Don't do it? Based on what evidence? I don't believe this is good advice at all given our extraordinary results in automating our feed to Twitter. I believe the appropriate advice should have been to proceed with caution, test it, measure it, and see what the results are.

At Compendium, we've automated our feeds to Twitter using HootSuite and our followers love it. So much, in fact, that Twitter is our top referring source outside of our corporate web site and search. If that's not enough, I'll juice up the stakes a little more and let you know that about 1% of our clicks on our calls to action come from visitors from Twitter.

That means that our followers are using our Twitter account as they would an RSS feed. They are expecting our posts to show up there. And not only do they like us automating our feed, they respond to the postings overwhelmingly!

Twitter is an extension of our corporate blog and a perfect use of our RSS feed to reach a a different audience. The audience is permission-based... they opt in to following on Twitter... we're in no way spamming anyone. As well, our blogs ARE our personality and we're extending that personality on Twitter by using automated postings. It's not faceless promotion... our posts are our voice and our advice!

Legitimate marketers test and share their results so that others can do the same. Jason may not like automated Twitter posts, but he should never advise folks to not do something without evidence that it will not work. Jason doesn't understand your business nor does he understand mine. Providing evidence where it has had negative results would have been appropriate given his opinion.

If you can drive more traffic to your blog and your company by automating your Twitter account, you can save time AND remain active on Twitter. If your Twitter following continues to grow with automated Tweets, and you are getting additional traffic and business... why wouldn't you automate your blog to Twitter???

PS: I dont' disagree with any of the other tips Jason supplies... but before you bail on automating your blog's RSS feed, check out the results first.

Comments for Twitter Automation: Why Jason Snell May Be Wrong

Monday, June 22, 2009 by Angela Connor:: Social Media is NOT one-size-fits-all and I am increasingly annoyed with those who feel as though their way is the only way. Good for you, challenging these assumptions and directives that will lead many astray. Angela Connor | @communitygirl http://blog.angelaconnor.com
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 by Sherrie Mersdorf:: See, and I would have to agree with Jason here. We were automating our tweets - we use Compendium, but because of the approval process our followers were getting blasted with several tweets at a time - that's no good. I HATE IT when companies (or other tweeps for that matter) fill up my entire feed. In my book (and I know many others - which is why you have "experts" saying not to do it) it gets you unfollowed in an instant. But Angela's right - it's not one size fits all. Each org needs to find what works best for them. But leaving your twitter to just act as an RSS feed is a bad idea - what happens when people (potential prospects!) try to communicate with you on twitter? Orgs need to engage customers/potential customers where they live sometimes too, not rely on referrals to get them to your blog (then your website). That's a FAIL in my book.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 by Sarah:: I wouldn't write Jason off so quickly, either. The people who fill up my entire Twitter home page with robotic, impersonal tweets? I unfollow them in a heartbeat. I'm not using Twitter just to get a feed of your blog posts. I'll sign up for the RSS or, oh, I don't know, visit your blog if I want that. I definitely agree it's not one size fits all, but for most organization who actually want to use Twitter like it's meant to be used -- for person-to-person INTERACTION -- the automated feed may certainly be the wrong fit.
Thursday, June 25, 2009 by Douglas Karr:: Great comments - but I think you're taking this to the extreme. I didn't advise not communicating via Twitter nor did I advise only doing the RSS to Twitter. Jason's advice was to NEVER automate your blog post via Twitter - that's where the disagreement is. If you're writing 1 to 2 posts a day and you personally use Twitter, 1 or 2 tweets about your new link are NOT going to impact you. How do I know? I've got 7,000+ followers and I automate 2 feeds to my Twitter account. I continue to grow followers AND my blog traffic.