Over at I Tech Therefore I Am, Matt talks about how he decides where to post what kind of content. It’s an interesting analysis of how to manage a single human being through the lens of different audiences.
On a micro(blogging) scale, I’ve been thinking about the same things – when do I post something on Twitter, when Facebook, and when LinkedIn.
Originally, it was simple. I put things related to work on Twitter and things related to my personal life on Facebook. I didn’t post anything to LinkedIn, save an ill-conceived week when I copied my Twitter feed to LinkedIn.
Then I started sharing more of my personality on Twitter – articles I thought were interesting, pictures of babyDiva, other items that rounded out @storageDiva to be more personal.
When I started to look for a job, I wanted to be more active on LinkedIn, so many of the items I posted on Twitter I also posted on LinkedIn. I didn’t post totally personal things on LinkedIn – like photos – but I did post articles of technical interest.
(And I’ll pause here for a second to say that if it weren’t for Buffer none of this would work. They make it so easy to manage all of this!! In fact, in their live #bufferchat I shared my favorite productivity apps:
Every morning, I get my news from Feedly, I syndicate things I think are interesting through Buffer, and I save longer reads for later with Pocket.)
Anyway, back to my strategy. When I was at Dell, I was maniacal about keeping Facebook private – I didn’t friend my friends at work, and I didn’t post much about Dell. Now I feel a little different about that, and I syndicate this blog on all three platforms. Plus, I’m tiring a little of Facebook – too many ads, and too much curation of my News Feed.
All of this is to say, it feels good to have a system and a strategy. And I think I am figuring out what the right stuff is to put where. I hit the Buffer button, and for each article, picture, etc., choose which social networks it belongs on. This blog, however, has been challenging for exactly this reason. I do send it to all three channels, although the people I know through each channel are very different audiences.
- Facebook is everyone from high school acquaintances and camp friends I barely remember to cousins and my mother.
- LinkedIn is people I know professionally.
- Twitter is a weird mix of those two, plus people I meet randomly in the twittersphere, and the only place where I know some people online before I know them in real life. It’s where I post most Infinio stuff, too.
So “know your audience” is not helpful – I do know it, and it’s too broad to find a lot of what I post relevant. I feel good about the tweets and articles I put through these three channels, but I know it’s not working as well for this blog.