No, don't auto-post your blog or Twitter to your Facebook

By Kari Chisholm:

We get asked all the time: How can I automatically post everything from my website/blog to my Facebook page?

The answer: It's easy, but don't.

Why not? Because Facebook's algorithm punishes status updates generated by automated systems. Not only that, but you're almost certainly going to be posting headlines - rather than witty, insightful, thoughts that intrigue people enough to click, like, and comment.

Over at WPMU, one blogger actually tracked this effect when she changed her Facebook posting from automated to manual:

From 20th February to 20th March we received 435 visits from Facebook. From 20th March to 20th April we received 3252 visits from Facebook. That’s an increase of 647.59%!

So what changed? We didn’t see a sudden rise in the people who “Like” us on Facebook. We haven’t changed our regularly posting pattens. What we did, and what you can do too, was turn off autoposting to Facebook.

And, by the way, the same applies to Twitter. Don't feed your Twitter to your Facebook page.

We recommend producing content for Facebook and Twitter that's written for those two very different cultural environments. But if you must automate, feed your Facebook to your Twitter, not the other way around. (But don't forget Twitter's 140 character limit!)