You don't have to post all of your status updates to both Facebook and Twitter.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images News/Getty Images
If you're an avid user of both Facebook and Twitter, especially if you use the services to promote a business, it can be tempting to auto-sync your updates between the services. But people who follow you on both sites may get tired of seeing the same updates twice; automating your social media updates puts you in danger of looking inauthentic and uninterested in engaging with your followers. Differentiating your Facebook and Twitter personalities can make your online life more exciting and relevant to your audiences.
Step 1
Unlink your Facebook and Twitter accounts. You may have your tweets set up to also post as status updates on Facebook, but undoing this action will help you differentiate how you use the two sites. To stop sending your tweets to Facebook, go to the Twitter app page on Facebook (apps.facebook.com/twitter), click "Want to disconnect your Twitter and Facebook accounts?" and click "OK."
Step 2
Consider your audience on each site. For example, if you use Facebook primarily to connect with close friends and family and have a more professional network on Twitter, then post personal content to Facebook and professional content (such as links to articles about your field) on Twitter. If your tweets are public, then they're more likely to show up in searches for your name than Facebook posts, so keep that in mind as well when deciding what to post to each site.
Step 3
Post different forms of media to each site. Facebook may be a more appropriate place for family photos, for example, since you can adjust your privacy settings to only allow certain people to view the photos; photo albums are also easily archived and viewed from your profile page on Facebook, and are harder to find on Twitter. On the other hand, if you're live-blogging or streaming video for an event or posting many photos quickly, Twitter may be a better option, since tweets are more easily shared with a wide audience and old updates disappear from the stream quickly.
Step 4
Interact with your followers/fans on each site separately. On Twitter, reply to people who mention your username in a tweet; on Facebook, reply to people who leave comments on your posts and wall. The easiest way to show appreciation for a post on Facebook is to click the "Like" button; on Twitter, it's "Retweet." Use these functions to show friends you're paying attention to what they're contributing to the conversation.
Photo Credits
- Dan Kitwood/Getty Images News/Getty Images
