3 Reasons to NOT Auto-Post Your Tweets to LinkedIn
Yesterday, I presented How To Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business at the St. Louis Sales & Marketing Summit. There was one really good question I was asked after the presentation that I didn't address and meant to, so I thought I would write a quick blog post about it.
The questions was "Should I auto-post my tweets to LinkedIn?". If you are not familiar with this option on LinkedIn, it basically allows you to connect LinkedIn to your Twitter feed and then automatically post all of your tweets to LinkedIn as updates.
Here is what it looks like when you send a tweet to LinkedIn...
You'll notice that next to my name it says "via Twitter". If you scan through your updates, you will probably see quite a few of these auto-posted tweets.
Like many things in social media, there are no steadfast laws or rules about what you can and can't do in situations like this, only opinions and best practices. That said, I personally don't think people should auto-post tweets to LinkedIn and here are 3 reasons why:
Frequency
The number of times most people tweet on a daily basis are far greater the number of times most experts say you should post updates on LinkedIn. The recommended frequency for tweeting is about 5-10 times per day according to some experts, while many LinkedIn Gurus agree that you should post updates no more than 1-2 times per day.
If I wanted to sift through 1000s of tweets per day from my connections, I would follow them on Twitter and do it there. I want my LinkedIn update stream to be clean and uncluttered so I can interact with my connections on a more personal level, which is why I generally will hide updates from my LinkedIn connections if they are auto-posting more than a few tweets a day.
Etiquette
The etiquette and terminology on the two platforms are completely different. Many people on LinkedIn don't know what a hashtag is or what RT means. They aren't familiar with #followfriday or #musicmonday. They could be confused when they see me referred to as @MarketPathAC instead of my full name.
Twitter has a language of its own and doesn't always translate very well for non-twitter users, which make up a majority of LinkedIn's demographic. Heck, I've been on Twitter for 3 years and I still don't understand what some peoples' tweets say.
Shareability
This is my #1 reason not to auto-post tweets to LinkedIn. Take a look at the image below... it's the same question I asked in the "via Twitter" example I used at the beginning of this post, only this time I posted it directly as a LinkedIn update:
See the difference? I now have the option to Like, Comment or Share this update instead of Favorite, Retweet or Reply. Why would I want to Favorite, Retweet or Reply to your LinkedIn update on Twitter? Many auto-tweets I see have good content, usually an article or quote that I WOULD like to share with my LinkedIn connections... but I can't because they are tweets, not direct updates.
A Few Alternatives
It only takes a few extra seconds to jump on LinkedIn and post an update directly. I suggest you pick 1 or 2 of your best tweets each day, remove all the # and @ twitter garbage and update your LinkedIn profile like it was meant to be updated, directly from LinkedIn's homepage.
You could also use a Social Media Management Tool like Hootsuite to send updates to both Twitter and LinkedIn at the same time. Just remember that your update is going to LinkedIn as well so try to limit the tweet-speak.
If you just can't live without tweeting to LinkedIn, you could at least change your setting so that only tweets that include #in or #li will be shown in your LinkedIn updates. I'll make it VERY easy for you to do this... just click here to go directly to your Twitter settings in LinkedIn and check the box that says "Share only tweets that contain #in (#li also works) in your LinkedIn status."
Do you agree with me? Can you think of other reasons why you should not (or should) auto-post tweets to LinkedIn? Which social media site has been the most effective in your business?
You can click here download the slides and notes from my presentation How To Use LinkedIn To Grow Your Business from the St. Louis Sales & Marketing Summit on May 16th, 2012. Oh and please feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter :-)
