After reading Pam Moore's post on 'I Google+ circled, followed, liked, linked, bookmarked you, now what?', I spent some time pondering about the connections we make on multiple social platforms, with the one person.
There are people I follow on Twitter, have connected to on LinkedIn, follow their blog, liked this, and circle that, possibly Kiltred them too, all for the same person. Essentially, I follow all their social profiles. I know I'm not alone on this one.
After getting to know them on one platform, there is a gradual connection to other social profiles. A relationship progression, if you like.
From a networking perspective, this is brilliant; such connections are heavily embedded into your network. You are building a relationship with them.
The question is what do your different social profiles mean to you? Do you treat them differently?
All the profiles you create on social media are different to each other. For instance Twitter differs from Facebook, which differs from LinkedIn and Google+, Kiltr, Quora, here on Social Media Today... The list seems never ending.
My point being, that, in a pro-active, broadcast sense, I see many people broadcasting identical content on all platforms. They post the same content, in the same way. It can be very tiresome if you follow the same person or brand over and over.
It's not my intention to get into the broadcast versus relationship debate, and I know the shelf-life of content differs widely between the media, but are we really creating value in identical repetitive postings on all networks?
The thing I love about social media is the content re-mix value. We all have a voice and we can alter established perceptions with our amplified social voice. Just look at what consumer reviews do to some brands. So why can't we re-mix our own content to suit the platform we post it on?
Time is an issue, yes. And I'm all over integrated digital communications. Just please don't do it in the same way every time you post. The same link with the same introduction or thumbnail picture gets boring when you have seen it three times already.
Posting on Multiple Platforms? 4 Tips to Keep Content Fresh
- Do you really need to post the content on all platforms? I see some Tweets on my LinkedIn feed that really don't seem to be appropriate for that platform. LinkedIn is a professional social network, so do I really need to know about your weekend plans on this platform?
- Think about the special characteristics of the platform. How many characters do you have to play with, how long is the self-life of the post, what are the special idiosyncrasies of that social media? Work with those special characteristics - create content for that platform.
- Think about how you can re-mix the content or intro to a link. Be creative. There is more than one way to introduce something. Content can have multiple messages. In what different ways can you capture attention?
- Think about what you want the reader to do with the content. This again comes down to the special characteristics of the platform and the broadcast versus relationship debate. What do you want your reader to do with the content? The content you post should play to the interactivity of the platform.
Do you have any experiences with posting the same content to your social profiles? I would love to know your thoughts on this...