Consolidation or Craziness?
I often have the chance to review a new app or software or website that promises to save you time, consolidate all your social media channels in one place and automate posting on social media venues. The premise is simple: Give whatever program your user name and password for all your social media accounts and then post whenever you like and it can go to all of them at once! Saves you lots of time! None of that logging in and logging out and posting here and posting there. Seems like such a great idea.
Except, what does that look like on the receiving end? I have some of the same friends on Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus and there is nothing so heartwarming as to read “I just perfected cold fusion,” on three different websites. To the recipient you are repeating yourself over and over. Not too attractive.
Then there is the reality of all those different social media venues to begin with. What was the reason you joined? If you are fairly savvy about social media you probably joined each one for a different reason. Facebook may be the best way to stay in touch with a wide and diverse group of friends. Twitter might be the best way to find an affordable flight on Jet Blue or follow a pundit or release your own quick news blurts. Maybe you joined Google Plus because certain friends were there and no where else. Or you have a business page on Facebook. Do you really want to say the same thing in every conversation?
Hopefully not. I have a blog – this one – where I write about things I hope people will be interested in and I invest some thought in the subject and try to cover pros and cons. On Twitter I may tweet about a new roll out on Facebook or a new Tablet I saw on sale. On Facebook I connect with most of my friends and maintain my business page and those of my clients. Different places for different information. Different audiences getting different streams of info.
It isn’t that I never use social media tools. I have a Hoot Suite account to manage different Twitter streams without having to log in and out over and over. But the tools that offer to let you “post once” and have it appear “everywhere” just seem like a bad idea. What do you think?