One of my greatest annoyances is having my LinkedIn stream swallowed up by two to three people’s  tweets (My peers at OpenView Venture Partners will confirm this…I complain about it often). LinkedIn gives you the choice to link your accounts, but this choice shouldn’t be taken lightly.  

Here are my top 3 reasons why you SHOULDN’T link Twitter and LinkedIn:

• You tweet a lot, about all kinds of topics: That’s not a bad thing! Twitter is a fantastic place for sharing data, links and ideas on a large variety of topics. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is much more professionally focused. Though your Twitter followers may laugh at your Lady GaGa Grammy joke, LinkedIn is really not the best platform for that type of content.

• You frequently tweet opinions that may be counter to those your company would like you expressing: So you just sent out a tweet “That lunch at McDonalds just made me so sick–Why is their food so gross?!”… innocent enough, yes? Not so if McDonalds just happens to be among your main clients and you are linked to one of their leaders on LinkedIn. Why is it okay to tweet one thing and it isn’t okay to post it on LinkedIn? Well, I would say that you shouldn’t have tweeted it in the first place, but LinkedIn can increase your reach to an audience that knows you and your organization better. Not good!         

• You re-tweet a lot: Re-tweeting on Twitter, good. Re-tweeting on LinkedIn? Talk about irritating, not only is my LinkedIn stream spilling over with your tweets…but they don’t even belong to you! Re-tweeting is awesome on Twitter, but LinkedIn respond well to that type of update.  

If you possess the three criteria below, I feel its okay to link your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts:

1. You only tweet once a day (maximum)
2. You only tweet about topics relating to your area of professional expertise
3. You never tweet, ever

Get the point? If you intend for SOME of your tweets to appear in your LinkedIn stream, you can change your settings so that when you include the hashtag “#in” your tweet will automatically be posted on LinkedIn. This is the perfect option for those who tweet on a regular basis, but not always about work.

At the expansion stage, it is important to appear as professional as possible and this is an easy way way to stay away from irritating your business connections while still being able to update your LinkedIn status with pertinent information. If your LinkedIn stream isn’t important, people will start to disregard your updates–that isn’t beneficial when one of your major goals could be driving website traffic! No one said B2B social media was easy; it takes time and patience!

What do you think about linking social accounts?

Corey O’Loughlin is a Marketing Analyst at OpenView Labs and is responsible for marketing initiatives for both OpenView as well as the portfolio companies.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites