Make the Most of the Linked In & Twitter Break Up

Oct 11, 2012

Make the Most of the Linked In & Twitter Break Up

Breaking up might be hard to do, but when it comes to the relationship with Linked In and Twitter dissolving, we’ve found it can only help our clients.

Too Many Social Media Outlets?

If you’re like me, then you have limited time, resources and energy – especially when it comes to keeping up with the latest and greatest in social media and marketing your business. I’m a big fan of the “Less Is More” philosophy when it comes to social media, which basically means choosing among what I call “The Big Five,” which include:

All of these have their useful space in the social media community, once you’ve set up a web presence that you own (if you haven’t, call or email us immediately). And I’m convinced that much of the draw of each of those for different people has to do with personality and temperament. For example, Facebook and Pinterest are my personal favorites, and one of my colleagues absolutely sees no point in Pinterest (pun intended) but he loves Google+. While I see the value in Google+, sometimes it makes me want to poke my eyes out because that’s just the way I feel about it. I like Linked In, but by nature I’m not a networker, and I like Twitter but the hashtags still confuse me (I’m sad to say).
See? Personal preferences play a huge role in deciding which social media you use or don’t use on a regular basis, which makes thoughtfully linking as many social media outlets as you can valuable for those of us who like to keep our eyes in their sockets.

Linked In and Twitter Divorce

It wasn’t too long ago that Linked In and Twitter announced that they would be parting ways, and as a social media automated linker, I was quite disappointed.

It’s no longer breaking news, but that doesn’t mean that the divorce between Twitter and Linked In doesn’t sting. Like a child of divorce of my generation, the news of their relationship breaking up plunged me into a sea of denial. Maybe they’ll get back together, I thought. Or maybe there’s another option they’ll offer to those of us who used this service.

I waited, nurturing hope against all odds that I wouldn’t have to find yet another way to link my social media accounts together, investing valuable minutes of my time that may or may not pay off and that I unequivocally would not be able to get back, regardless of the outcome.

And while Linked In and Twitter didn’t get back together, I did find significant new value through their break up.

Gentle Reminder of the Value of Linked In

When Linked In was allowing users to automate a Twitter feed onto their profiles, we weren’t putting a lot of thought into how the Linked In profiles can specifically help our clients (or ourselves, for that matter).  Once they parted ways, we were forced to remember that Linked In generates over 250% more lead conversions than Twitter and Facebook. It’s a specialized outlet that allows people to more accurately focus on how they network with other professionals.

And now that Twitter isn’t clogging up the feeds in Linked In profiles, it’s easier for those professionals to find networks of interest. It’s also easier for the content that you post onto your Linked In page to actually get seen by your network as well as potential clients who happen to check out your reputation via Linked In.

Now we have more latitude to decide how we want to use Linked In as a resource instead of just plugging Twitter into our profile and leaving it at that.

Three Ways to Link Twitter and Facebook to Linked In

That said, you may just want to link Facebook and/or Twitter to your Linked In account for now, which is fine. First, however, decide which accounts you want to link together and only use one linking strategy – this will avoid duplicate posts, which become quite annoying to followers. There are three easy ways to link accounts – only choose one.

One way is to  head to The Chrome Web Store and type “Buffer” into the search bar. Buffer is an extension that works with Google Chrome to automate updates among social media outlets. This extension also works with Firefox and additional search engines – find out more at the Buffer site.

Another way to connect is through a third party site like DLVR.IT (shortened version of “deliver it”). I like this site because it’s easy to set up and has a lot of features to explore.

The third way is to manually link your Facebook and Twitter accounts on your Linked In Profile. Access your Linked In account and click “Edit Profile” in the Profile tab. Your profile will then look like the one below. Click “Edit Contact Info” (middle right) and a box will open up where you can add your other accounts.

 

Even though I’ve got Personal Website and RSS Feed, I could easily replace those by clicking Other in the provided dropdown menu, then typing in the description as needed. While you won’t get regular updates on your profile, the manual linking will allow uniformity when it comes to growing your network across social media outlets. As a final note, you can link your blog by searching for “Applications,” but be warned that the WordPress application doesn’t work while the Blog Link by SixApart seems to work fine.

 

 

 

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