As my readers by now know, I am no fan of loading up a service like Hootsuite and letting it blast stuff in every direction. And please do not misunderstand; I have a Hootsuite account and use it where appropriate. For instance, if I am giving a series of seminars I may want to schedule invites and reminders to appear on Facebook or on Twitter at specific times. Rather than forget to post them, I may put them into Hootsuite or even use Facebook’s clunky and unreliable scheduler.
But for regular posts I am dead set against what I consider “stacking.” I handle about 30 Facebook accounts personally and I monitor and over see even more. There is a temptation to load up my client The Printer with statuses about the printing industry and business cards on sale. But if I do that they will begin to sound very canned. And, while I will get notifications of important details, I won’t know everything in their newsfeed which I scan daily. Why is that important? Because those are the businesses that they follow. The businesses that have purchased printing from them in the past, who may purchase printing from them in the future. Businesses they need to track so if that business opens a new branch they can proactively contact them about printing new business cards, brochures, etc. Little things like that are not picked up when you are stacking the statuses and scanning the notifications.
Basically, everything that happens on that newsfeed is what is going on in a businesses community. It’s someone getting promoted, a new clinic opening, an office got renovated – need new business cards to go with that paint job? Even the comments and the Likes on the statuses are of value. Is there another business commenting that also just went through a move? Can the printer reach out to them and pick up a new client? My clients trust my Facebook management to impact their bottom line in a very positive manner. I can’t do it by stacking statuses and heading out for a martini.