Pimp My FaceTweet

June 26, 2009 7:16 AM

Mid-level Facebook user and low-level Twitterer seeks way to maximize these social media services for networking, information aggregation, and long walks on the beach. Oh, yeah, all while not spending every waking nanosecond online hitting "refresh."

The details: I'm a freelance writer and blogger looking to give clients and potential clients a better sense of the scope of my work. Currently I post links to my blog posts to both FB and Twitter, but it just feels as if I'm not using these services to their full potential. On FB I also do the usual posting of daily activities and random thoughts; I don't do that on Twitter.

So how do you resolve the personal-professional Facebook/Twitter dilemma? I looked through answers to this previous AskMefi question, and it has some good thoughts but doesn't quite capture what I'm looking for. What do you think, friends? Thanks in advance!

posted by shallowcenter to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I think this will have you covered:

to make Twitter posts into Facebook status updates, look for the 'twitter' apps on Facebook and follow the instructions on installing the one that does what I said above.

Get a unique email address from the twitter website so that you can post twitters by email.

Then, on your blog, enable email notifications and input the twitter email.
This last part works better on some blog systems than on others, for instance I couldn't get it to work automatically on my MT 3.2 blog.
posted by spacefire at 8:24 AM on June 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

I'm not saying to self-link here, but you may want to put your twitter service on your meta profile page. It would be helpful to see how you are using it now.

Post like a person, not like an entity. If every post is "Look: PepsiBlue" people will tune you out quickly. If you post, crap about your cat, interesting places you're going, insight to your working process, then people are more willing to seek out your Pepsi posts, since they will want to know why you think this is cool too.

If your stuff is interesting to non-clients you can consider making a facebook fan page.

Follow @pageoneresults He has good advice and good links (not affiliated with him in any way other than as a follow).

I can tell you tons of ways NOT to do things. Don't follow expecting people to follow back (many will, but the people that auto-follow are just going to be there for broadcasting, and won't read what you're writing). If you curate the list of people you follow tightly, you will have a more enjoyable time with your feed.

My best piece of advice is to look into an offline updating application that can do multiple sites. Also, 3rd party posting service like tweet later are a great way to leverage your feed. If your services are worldwide you're neglecting about 25% of your audience while you sleep. tweet later can also be set to auto-follow people back, and unfollow them automatically if they unfollow within 3 days. I don't use that option, but it does work.
posted by cjorgensen at 8:26 AM on June 26 [1 favorite has favorites]

spacefire's suggestion works if you just want to cross-post everything you do to all your social networking sites, but that could alienate some poeple who are connected to you on both and subscribe to your RSS feed. I, for one, have un-RSSed and un-followed a bunch of people who do that kind of blast notification.

One thing you could do is create a "fan page" on Facebook for Shallow Center, Freelancer, that professional contacts can subscribe to and that you can post your professional updates to, and keep your standard FB profile for personal contacts (my sister does this for her photography business).
posted by sjuhawk31 at 8:35 AM on June 26

Also: Desktop apps like EventBox, Seesmic Desktop (very beta), and even online aggregators like iGoogle can help you keep track of everything on one screen, and most of them will refresh on their own.
posted by sjuhawk31 at 8:47 AM on June 26

Thanks, guys. cjorg, profile updated accordingly. sjuhawk, so noted--I'll have to check those out. Can you mail me offline with your sister's fan page?

Other thoughts, friends?
posted by shallowcenter at 12:07 PM on June 26

Ok, I checked your feed.

My two biggest pieces of advice:

1. Follow more people. I checked the kind of people you are following and you have an decent curated list. There are more people interested in this topic though, so follow some. Many will follow back.

2. Play the long game. Only 3-5% of my traffic comes from twitter, but I have 4 sites that I have guest posted on that drive quite a bit back. I met all these people through twitter.

3. You're biggest issue is you are, for the most part, what I refer to as a "broadcaster." You are engaging people though, so it get a bit confusing, but having the majority of your posts pointing people to your site is probably a failure (and it looks boring in the stream, so I am reluctant to click the links). I once did an experiment, when I only promoted other people's sites for an entire evening. The next day traffic was up on my site. I am guessing because of those people checking it out, and also because they gave me shout outs to readers that don't follow me.

4. Talk about stuff that doesn't really matter. Talk about the process. Talk about what you're currently doing. If people wanted press releases there would have never been a twitter. You don't have to hyper focus on one topic. You can do that on your site. The best example I know of someone on twitter that uses it to promote his stuff is @zappos. I am not a show fan, but I read his feed all the time. It makes me laugh.

5. Tweet more.

I'll let you know about FB when I have that figured out. Heh!
posted by cjorgensen at 11:01 AM on June 28