No, but yes.  Huh?  This is one of my pet peeves in social media.  And be forewarned – you may not agree with me!

My pet peeve – or at least, strong dislike – are those social media users who post messages on Twitter via Facebook BUT never come to Twitter engage in follow up conversation. 

I hope you read the whole sentence before you dash off a nasty note to me – I’m not saying you shouldn’t post from Twitter to Facebook.  I understand the efficiency of creating your message once and “pushing” it to the various social media platforms.  BUT, what I don’t understand are those Facebook users who do push info to Twitter AND don’t come to Twitter for the follow-up conversations and relationship building.

Here’s what I see happening – and I’ll use a restaurant as an example.  If Restaurant-A-Rama (RAR) only posts messages on its Facebook fan page with distribution to Twitter et al, they are creating a monologue relationship.  They have “spoken” to us on Twitter, but aren’t there (on Twitter) for the Q&A or to monitor the feedback.  I may see a tweet that RAR has 1/2 price ribs tonight, but if I want to ask what type of sauce they use, or if they can accomodate my birthday party of 12 or if I just want to tell them they are my favorite restaurant in the city, it probably falls on deaf ears.  I want a dialogue – is that too much to ask?

You cannot monitor the Twitter conversations that come from your message while you are on Facebook. You have to come play with us in the Twitter sandbox, spend a little time, build a little sandcastle and let us get to know you – where WE are.  If I reply to RAR on Twitter and they don’t reply to my inquiry, thank me for my retweet or share additional information, they have missed the opportunity to build a relationship with me – and isn’t that the point of social media? If I feel ignored, I’m probably not buying from you, no matter how creative the message was.

Anyone can buy ads, post them all over town, on the radio/TV, and take whatever business comes from that.  Expensive, often not effective, and not very personal. But if you want to build customer/client relationships and be a good member of the community, you cannot force feed us one-way messaging on social media and then not participate in whatever ensues.  That’s an infomercial, and most of us will go running and screaming from you, far and fast.

So what to do? Go ahead and post your message once, using one of the many tools that offer this service.  It will go to Facebook, Twitter, et al.  But then allocate 10-15 minutes per day (or many times daily) to come see what has transpired on each of the platforms – and talk to us.  We assume you got into social media to be social, so we appreciate your feedback, your insights, your offerings.  Dialogue is king.