Social media dashboards have become a staple in every community managers (or avid social media users') bag of tools. Amazingly convenient, they put an end to the rapid-fire tweets from users and instead allowed them to nicely distribute them throughout the day (most users, some still haven't gotten the memo). Sadly, this convenience has come with a counterpart that is slowly killing you...and your social reputation.
After writing your thoughts into the 'compose message' box, the next step is to choose a social channel to post to, but many people got the wrong idea on this step! This nice little box listing all your channels has a fault - it has a select "all" option! This has lead to the epidemic of "over-sharing."
Now, we are seeing not only users falling into this trap, but media outlets and brands alike. Every channel we look at, we are seeing the same exact update! Eek!
To be fair, a small part of the time this is fine and goes unnoticed (catchy headlines, cool stats), but for someone who usually has all their social networks up on tabs all day (hey judge, I'm a community manager) seeing the same post everywhere from someone I follow makes my hand involuntarily move the mouse to the unlike button.
eMarketer showed in 2011, that 73.6% of US marketers reported that creating original content was one of the biggest challenges they faced - but with the importance of content creation on the rise, we are all hoping this number decreases. Social media is all about buzz, but repeated content tend to wear down followers, making it less likely for them to share or engage with messages.
There are many different annoying elements that come from over-sharing result, just to name a few below;
- Using Facebook like Twitter - they are different platforms! We don't want to hear from you every hour on Facebook - its clogs our newsfeeds.
- Hashtags don't work on Facebook...again it's not Twitter.
- LinkedIn isn't just your friends....your employer or potential employers do not care about how "sweet" those tequila shots were last Saturday.
So, next time you are on Hootsuite or CoTweet, before you click that "all" button, remember, just because it's there, doesn't mean you have to - resist! Take the opportunity to create unique content that each of your audiences will appreciate. They will remember you for it, and more importantly, keep following you.