Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

Almost every day lately, I hear people who seem to think Twitter and Facebook are public relations strategies.

They’re not. They’re tools. Exciting tools, but tools nonetheless.

I enjoy spending my Saturdays making furniture and other stuff out of wood. Naturally, I love a new tool, and there are some great ones out there. But no matter how many gadgets I have, there are some basic principles of woodworking. The species of wood selected must be suitable for the job. The cuts must be square or perfectly angled. The surfaces must be flat. The parts must fit together. The measurements must be precise. An error of 1/8 of an inch at the beginning of a project can ruin the entire piece.

Imagine how silly it would be if I equated my biscuit joiner with a set of plans for a new coffee table.

Yet, I see people doing that all the time. They say, “We’re doing Social Media,” by which they usually mean that they have a Twitter and Facebook account and post things occasionally. But post what? To whom? How often? What role does it post play in your overall program? Are your Facebook friends or your Twitter followers candidates buy your company’s products? Can they help you get where you need to go? If not, what’s the point? How do you reach larger, more important audiences?

Taking it a step further, do you have a set of well-defined messages that are tied in to your company’s corporate objectives? We’re barely scratching the surface here. But until you know what you need to accomplish, whose cooperation you need to accomplish it, and what you need to say to them to move you toward your goal, you may as well shut down your Facebook and Twitter accounts and save your time.

I read and hear a lot of comments pitting Twitter against Facebook, as if the two were somehow comparable.

The golden rule of social media is to use what is most useful to you. Outside that context, it doesn’t matter that Twitter is dominated by a small minority of registered users, or that it has a higher dropout rate than Facebook. It doesn’t matter that Facebook allows for more meaningful conversations but offers little opportunity to reach out beyond your user base.

Besides, with tools like TweetDeck that can let you post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time, who cares?

But at the risk of annoying all the old timers, let me lay out the big difference for newbies: Facebook is for making and connecting with friends. Twitter is for reaching a wider audience based on specific interests (and search terms) and pointing to something long enough to be meaningful, such as a blog or web site. Carrying on a coherent conversation that others can follow as well is almost impossible on Twitter. Broadening your audience is just as difficult in Facebook.

OK, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. But if there’s anything we know about today’s media, it is that people digest things in small bites. So that’s today’s nibble. We’ll talk more in the next few days.