Tweet or don’t, but stop faking it

I’ve decided recently that I’ve had it with people who auto-tweet stuff. Sure this blog post will be automatically tweeted from my blog, BUT I’ll be on and off twitter throughout the day so if someone comments on my tweet I’m around to answer it, thank them, or block them if they’re just a spam-bot.

I was talking the other day with someone about this. If you want to have a twitter account then you need to be on twitter. Yes, scheduled tweets are great. And they can work for a few things, BUT I don’t need to read that inspirational quote that you clearly don’t care ENOUGH about to post when it has meaning to you. If something inspires you, tweet about it. Don’t schedule inspiration, has that ever worked?

I stopped following someone a couple months ago who claims to be a branding expert. However, their social media account loops through about 10 canned tweets a week. It’s embarrassing for the brand and clearly this person is never on their twitter page, nor do they care to be. If you don’t want to use twitter, DON’T use twitter.

And yes, it’s the same thing with Facebook and any other social media outlet. Yesterday I met with a client of mine and we talked about their social media pages. They’re more B2B and currently the Facebook link goes to the owners personal page, not even the company page. After a brief discussion we decided to drop the Facebook page all together.  Bam, one more thing off your to do list.

If your new years resolution was to simplify and streamline, don’t setup scheduled tweets in a program, either do it yourself, or don’t do it. You’re not helping your brand. Trust me.