For social media mortals, one conundrum has caused many a tear to fall: Why can’t you update your Twitter account from Facebook? Finally, prayers have been answered. Last week, the social media giant announced Facebook users will soon be able to tweet from the comfort of their own Facebook dashboard. Users of Facebook Pages will yawn at this news, as they’ve been able to send their status updates to Twitter for quite some time. Yet this story is newsworthy because not only does it show that Facebook is trying to be more compatible with other social networks, but also that Facebook is not going to take this Google+ thing lying down.
In what’s sure to be a buzzed-about blurb at F8, the Facebook conference happening in San Francisco on September 22, the new feature lets users send their exciting status updates to Twitter. While Twitter certainly has its own language and tweets sound ridiculous as Facebook updates, Facebook messages on Twitter actually work. And having Twitter and Facebook become besties is a brilliant brand move that makes sense since Google+ will be able to update a multitude of social media accounts and fast-share all kinds of information from one handy place.
While this is good news for the average Joe, it’s a mixed blessing for those of us in the social media marketing biz. Sure, we want our clients to be able to navigate their social media accounts. But messages on any professional social media page should be planned out thoughtfully. Some thoughts and ideas work brilliantly for Facebook as its video posting and link sharing blow Twitter out of the water. This doesn’t mean they need to be tweeted, though. Although your audience for both is most likely the same, the platforms themselves certainly are not. Twitter has its own brisk, limited-character language while Facebook is perfectly suited for longer conversations and spirited back and forth with followers. In short, just because you’ll soon be able to share updates on Twitter, it doesn’t mean you should.
So readers, what’s your take? Is tweeting on Facebook something you’ll try, or are you just as happy using Hootsuite or Tweet Deck? Talk amongst yourselves in the comments section below!
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