Should I Auto Post My Blogs to Facebook?

It is a Sin Not to Blog

When I start­ed the Chism Bros. paint­ing blog in 2006, most con­sumers and busi­ness own­ers had no clear idea of what a blog was. After attend­ing dozens of webi­na­rs, online pre­sen­ta­tions, sem­i­nars, lec­tures, receiv­ing hun­dreds of cold calls, read­ing arti­cles and much more, most Amer­i­cans are now famil­iar with blog­ging. Now that does not mean that busi­ness own­ers actu­al­ly believe in the pow­er of con­tent mar­ket­ing and blog­ging. Instead, many have come to believe that if they don’t have a blog, they are com­mit­ting a busi­ness ​“sin.”

So What Do They Do About It?

Not many com­pa­nies today want to be con­sid­ered old fash­ioned or behind the times, so instead of com­mit­ting the sin of not hav­ing the blog, they start a blog and begin plog­ging along. For most of these busi­ness­es, hav­ing a blog is just to keep the techies, sales­men and mar­ket­ing geeks at arms length so they can say, ​“Yes…yes, I have a blog. Now leave me alone.” or ​“Oh yeah. I have a Face­book page, and guess what, my blogs can be found there too. They auto­mat­i­cal­ly show up!”

Auto Post­ing

All that is just the intro and back­ground to the real rea­son for this post, which is, ​“Should I auto post my blogs to Face­book or oth­er social sites?” In most cas­es, my answer is No; still I would say Yes in a very lim­it­ed sense. Let me explain: Yes First If you are going to have a blog, whether you write it your­self or have folks to help write qual­i­ty con­tent, some­times it is ok to auto post your blogs. It is one less thing to wor­ry about. I’ve done this sort of thing myself on my social sites and have helped my clients set­up auto post­ing apps and fea­tures such as Social RSS, Hoot Suite and Tweet Deck. Now The Rea­son Not to Auto Post  Even though I’ve been one of those guys who has embraced auto post­ing fea­tures, I’ve nev­er real­ly liked doing it. Some­thing did not sit well with me when I saw the auto post appear for my clients, for my busi­ness or when I saw auto post show up on my news feed. I’ve thought the same thing: this is NOT per­son­al and/​or social. Auto Post­ing lacks per­son­al­i­ty and engage­ment. I’ve watched the ana­lyt­ics plum­met on auto post­ings vs. human posts that have a real sum­ma­ry before the link to a blog or arti­cle. Does­n’t it make sense that a post with a per­son­al endorse­ment would get more reads, likes and com­ments than a post that was auto tweet­ed, post­ed and shared?

Keep­ing it Per­son­al in the Con­tract­ing Business

Social Net­work­ing and Media has not real­ly changed. It has always meant to be per­son­al, not robot­ic and fake. Don’t just take my word for it. Check out these well known mar­ket­ing author’s and some of their recent and past books: 

• Seth God­in’s Per­mis­sion Mar­ket­ing: Turn­ing Strangers into Friends and Friends into Cus­tomers (I lis­tened to the audio of this book. It is a lit­tle bor­ing after awhile, but it does­n’t take long to under­stand God­in’s main points: Be social, be polite, be real, ask per­mis­sion, engage…and you’ll con­nect and grow your business.
• Bri­an Solis: Engage!
• Jay Baer’s Books: YoUtil­i­ty & The Now Revolution
• Mar­cus Sheri­dan’s Blog: The Sales Lion
• Gary V’s The Thank You Economy

We’ve tried to be hip and cool by hav­ing a Face­book, Google+ or Blog page, but if we don’t keep things per­son­al in our con­tract­ing busi­ness­es, we’ll see less and less engage­ment and fruit. So if you are like me, it is ok to make mar­ket­ing mis­takes now and then as long as those mis­takes only help you to make choic­es that make your com­pa­ny bet­ter. Pur­pose this week to delete those auto post­ing fea­tures, type up a sum­ma­ry of your blog or arti­cle, then post!