I often get asked about whether it makes sense to completely integrate Twitter Tweets with your LinkedIn Status Update, so that every tweet shows up on LinkedIn. Obviously there is no one correct answer for this as it depends on your objective and LinkedIn Brand. However, the question brings to mind a greater issue:
How often should you update your social media status on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Your Blog?
Each social media site has its own functionality, demographics, history, and culture. And you may have one or multiple objectives for using these sites. I won’t go into detail on how varying objectives may warrant different frequencies in which you update your status on each of the social media channels, but on average I would make the following recommendations:
Because there are so many tweets out there (there are more tweets than people now!) and the culture is one that accepts people who tweet a lot (this is explained by the fact that you could tweet a lot and go unnoticed), it is accepted to tweet several times a day. I tell people, when they start out, to aim for 4 to 5 tweets a day. I personally aim for 8 to 10, although I rarely achieve this goal. When I say tweets, I’m talking about sharing some type of relevant and valuable information, not just chit-chat. I do not preach automating in social media, but if there were one automation tip I recommend, it would be to schedule your tweets in advance with a tool like HootSuite so that they appear spread out throughout the day.
Before Twitter became as mainstream as it is today, LinkedIn had its own replication of the tweet with its “Status Update.” A lot of people used to wonder what to use their LinkedIn Status Update for. Now that LinkedIn is integrated with Twitter, and more LinkedIn members are on Facebook, people get the idea of what they could put on their Linkedin Status Update. That being said, because LinkedIn doesn’t have the same “Timeline of Tweets” like Twitter or “News Feed” like Facebook, it doesn’t make sense to post more than once a day on LinkedIn. I personally wouldn’t post anything if I didn’t have anything of value to say that wasn’t aligned with my objective. Furthermore, if you repeatedly show up multiple times in Network Updates on someone’s Home Page in the same day, it begins to look spammy, that you are trying too hard to “gain mindshare.” There are other and better ways of doing that on LinkedIn. And do remember that LinkedIn is also a Professional environment, so some personal tweets and Facebook posting content might not be appropriate here…
Facebook is a tough one. Similar to Twitter, there are so many people on Facebook competing for space on your News Feed that if you don’t post a lot you may not get noticed. However, I do see a lot of people who only post once a day, and when I have gone over that in the past, I have received word from Facebook friends that I posted too much! People definitely get most personal on Facebook. Certainly Twitter is not Facebook, so I personally don’t think that you should be posting every tweet here. On the other hand, if you have a lot going on, it may make sense to post multiple times in a single day. If I could compare the frequency of updating your status on Facebook compared with LinkedIn and Twitter, it would look something like this:
LinkedIn Status Updates < Facebook Posts < Twitter Tweets
Blogging
You really need someone to tell you how often to update your blog? As often as you can, of course! Seriously speaking, if you are going to blog, I do recommend that you do your best to blog at least one a week. Consistency is also important, but even if you are not consistent on the days of the week or how many times you post each week, I think you should try to publish one blog post on a weekly basis. Want to blog more? You can never blog too often. I dream of having the time to blog on a daily basis…and envy those who do!
On a final note, it is impossible to do all of the above using a tool like Ping.fm or even a client like HootSuite (although they are fantastic products) unless you are really disciplined. Just as it does not make sense to integrate all of your tweets into your LinkedIn profile, it also doesn’t make sense to overly automate your engagement with others by blasting the same message to all of the various social media platforms simultaneously. Yes, there may be an occasional post, like a new blog article that you wrote, that it may make sense to post on all platforms at once. That should be the exception, however, and not the rule.
What do you think? What are the social media status updates frequency guidelines that you use? Please comment and share your experiences with us!
I find that the article above is spot on for LinkedIn. Updated once a day is enough to keep a steady, yet not annoying, pace of updates.
As for Facebook, I would say study the pace of your posts from the time you firt put them up to when you no longer see it on the home section of your log on. For me, I have about 450 friends and it takes about 3 hours on average for a post to cycle off the home updates page. I have friends with under 200 friends and I have friends with over 500 friends. So I try to update every 3 to 4 hours during the day. Usually an update in the morning, an update in early afternoon, an update in early evening and then a final update later in the evening will work to keep on the radar of all of your friends. That being said, the evening has a faster pace than the rest of the day so you can either repost something of interest or post your more important postings at that time.
As for twitter, use it as you see fit. Some people tweet more than they should about local/personal/non-professional items. It is ok to mix in if you want to provide your followers with a sense of who you are. However, too much will result in a tuning out of your tweets.
I am working on a blog entry about updates and various takes on an updating strategy. Feel free to follow my blog at http://www.enlightenedconsultant.blogspot.com or look for a posting on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ucdws
One thing I often wonder when I see a company or individual that is frequently updating their social media status – why aren’t they busy working?