Twitter, Google+ And Facebook – Why You Should Never, Ever Cross The Streams

There are a lot of advantages associated with social media but if you really want to make it dance the way you wanted, you need to invest a lot of money and above all your valuable time.

The marketers and brands that are already using the social media platforms like Google+, Facebook and Twitter, are trying to sync their updates from one platform to another and mass-broadcasting seems to be a smart move. But to be true this is the biggest mistake that one can commit.

Listed below are 5 of the most prominent reasons why it is not wise to cross the streams:

1)      Twitter is no Google+ and Goggle+ is no Facebook: The members, communities and groups registered with these social networking sites have their own expectation, commitments and norms. Thus syncing them would in fact create huge confusion in the minds of your prospective customers.

ROI can be maximized on different platform by presenting your customized brand presence. Creating interest in your brand can be a tough task but your logos, customized messages can really do the magic. If you are syncing the updates for all the social media platforms then it won’t be late before your followers or groups get bombarded with the same message when they move from one platform to another.

2)      The Status Updates Need to be Equal: There is a character limit to your updates (Facebook allows 420 characters, Twitter 140 characters and Google+ provides you with an unlimited character update) on all the three platforms. This implies that when you are updating something on Google+ and it’s a long update, then it is bound to get truncated when displayed on Twitter or Facebook and what follows are ellipses.

While you try to sync the messages from Twitter to Facebook or Google+, tags that work seamlessly on Twitter would look really odd on the other two.

3)      Social Media should not lose touch of social: If you are using the general copy and paste trick then it is going to make you look like an obvious broadcaster. Thus, you are going to lose all your credibility among your groups or followers.  

4)      Is it really saving time for you? In reality you won’t be able to save a lot of time by cross-posting. For instance, even if you are cross-posting, there is a strong possibility that you would have to answer to the queries and even post different updates for different users on the three different platforms. Now, this can hardly save any time for you.

5)      The label of a spammer: You are going to be branded a spammer if you are going to cross-post your updates without any regard for the interest of your groups or followers. People will find out polite ways of wriggling out of the situation by saying that they are busy. Well, we all are busy these days…

If you think your business does not allow you to create unique updates for the three different platform then how do you expect that your followers or group members would have the time to take interest in your products of services. There is no place for half-hearted attempts in the social media platforms. At times it is quite good to have your updates being cross-posted but to that on a regular basis, especially with a blindfold, is something that won’t be acceptable.

Success means hard work and if you are looking for short cuts then let me remind you – there are none!