An experiment in status updates

Something I’ve noticed is that many people tend to post the same status update across all of their social networks. And what I’ve also noticed is that it seems like there’s less responses to such postings, because people can probably tell if you’re just blasting a post to all of your networks at the same time. To test this observation, I thought I would run a little experiment.

For one week I posted the same message to my Twitter and Facebook accounts. While I got some responses on Twitter, I got almost no responses on Facebook. There was not Twitter icon to indicate that I’d copied and pasted the same message, but the length of the message would give it away.

The next week I posted longer messages on my Facebook page and I ended up getting a lot more activity. By choosing not to limit myself to 140 characters, I could show my fans that I wasn’t just copying and pasting a message. People interacted more because they knew the message was different than what they would find on Twitter or another social media site with a 140 character limit.

The value of an experiment like this is that it teaches you how important it is to recognize that no two social media sites are really alike and also that people will probably be able to tell if you’ve cross-posted the same message across each social media platform. By varying my message for my Facebook page I was able to get more discussion and interaction than I had before. Treating each site like it has the same limits ultimately limits the interaction, because not each has site has the same limits when it comes to amount of text or other forms of interaction.

Have any of you tried to experiment with status updates, and if so what have your results been?

Post comment as
twitter logo facebook logo
Sort: Newest | Oldest
Jason Cobine

Thanks for the timely reminder. The nuances of the various media are good to know, thanks for sharing

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like

Hi Mike,

I agree. Both do have difference audiences and that in and of itself speaks to the issue I posted about. I think the Facebook audience will notice the difference in text length, and that in and of itself makes it more interesting, because it shows that design can also be an aspect of what makes a person respond.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like
Mike Arnesen

I agree that it's easy to tell who updates Facebook from Twitter or a Twitter-client...especially when it uses hashtags! I think the differences between Facebook and Twitter are more than just character limits. Both have different audiences who want different things from the people they interact with. Taking the time to acknowledge that seems to really increase results.

I thought I would run a little experiment and post this response on both your blog and LinkedIn.

share
  • spam
  • offensive
  • disagree
  • off topic
 Like