Syndicate your social network updates and content with care

Finding ways of working smarter and faster drives progress in the workplace. But sometimes there are simply no shortcuts. Anyone that manages multiple social network profiles for an individual, organisation or brand wants to make the process as painless as possible.

The same content can be shared across networks using automated tools. Indeed you'll often see the same post from an individual within the space of seconds if you flit between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Content and network management applications such as Conversocial, Hootsuite and Sprout Social enable content to be syndicated to multiple platforms with a single click. You can schedule posts for periods of optimum engagement, or to coincide with other marketing efforts.

IFFFT is building a business by enabling people to build recipes to syndicate content from social media platform or network to another. I use it to back-up my Instagram images to Dropbox.

But any endeavour to automate or mechanise a social relationship should be approached with care. It may make for an easier life but it plainly isn't social and is likely at best to reduce your opportunity for engagement, and at worse backfire. As a general rule machines and people are uneasy bedfellows.

Each social network has its own ideal content format and conversational style.

LinkedIn is professional, Facebook personal, whereas Google+ and Twitter are a mixture. Photos work well on Facebook and Google+ whereas short sentences, ideally with a link, are best suited to LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn and Twitter appear to be unconcerned by syndicated updates. In fact LinkedIn provides a tick box on updates if you want to share your updates with your Twitter network.

Facebook is more discerning. It penalises posts from third-party applications. They are less likely to appear in your network's newsfeed than posts made directly via the network.

Meanwhile Google+ allows limited posting (see comment below from Mark Pack) to the network from third-party applications.

There are exceptions of course. It makes sense for news organisations to syndicate posts where their social networks are used to push out news stories rather than as a means of engagement. But as a general rule syndicate updates and content between networks with care.