So I’ve always had a hunch that there was something wrong with Facebook whenever I used a third party app to post my Facebook statuses. For some reason whenever I used something other than the inherent functionality within FB my post always seem to get buried. I at one time even unhooked my Twitter integration to do some of my own testing using Google Analytics based on how many people showed up on my blog when I shared it on Facebook through a third party app and when I just did it manually in Facebook. What I discovered was this, Facebook doesn’t share your stuff nearly as much when you don’t use their tools to do it.
For ease of use I was using Hootsuite as I manage about 8+ Twitter and Facebook accounts alone (not including Linkedin, Google+, etc) and using those third party apps was great for sharing stuff and making it easy but it was essentially ruining my potential to get out my posts to all of my friends and followers. The crazy thing was that beyond my own intuition and analytics I didn’t really have a way to “prove” this, until now. Last night at 3AM I was scouring the internet to find some new ways to manage all this stuff and I came across an article on Mashable.com titled “Facebook Fail: Posting via Other Apps Can Cut Likes & Comments by 88% [STUDY]”
The article shows that there was an independent study done by Applum the creators of Edgerack Checker. They analzyed a million plus Facebook updates to test the theory that posting to Facebook using third-party apps doesn’t generate as much interest and engagement as posting directly to Facebook yourself. The results were crazy! The discovered that using any of the top 10 apps that are out there will give an average of 88% fewer comments and likes when compared against posting it to Facebook manually. THAT’s CRAZY!
I know for some of you this is old news as this was released in September last year, but seriously, I can’t tell you how many people I know who run social media accounts professionally that still use Hootsuite to post to EVERYTHING! If I was paying out of my pocket for some one to run my social media I would definitely want them to know this stuff.
Any way, all that being said, last night I disconnected my Twitter account from Facebook and will now be posting to both the exact same post (for the most part) manually. Facebook also gives you a little more flexibility with adding pictures, links, character limit, etc so that will be good for more engagement generation as well.
And that’s it for my TODAY I LEARNED.
Until next time…
Much love,
– Shane Lamotte
Reference: Facebook Fail: Posting via Other Apps Can Cut Likes & Comments by 88% [STUDY]
Shane Lamotte 