Guy Kawasaki is famous for working as the early evangelist for Apple computer and he’s an author who’s written a lot of books about starting companies and how to build a loyal following for a brand.
Guy is also an early adopter of Twitter, and has openly stated that he repeats his tweets over and over (4 to 8 times each) in order to try to get additional attention to his messages.
He even has a blog post pointing to click through statistics where he defends his re-tweet strategy as a way to cut through the chatter of social media with… more… repetitive… automated… chatter.
Over the past few days, we noticed that we were getting multiple identical status updates from Guy via his new book’s Fan Page.
Seems that Guy’s Twitter approach is now being applied to his Facebook fan page via an application called Post Planner.
We’re not the only ones who openly question this approach to repeat postings using an automated status updating tool.
After the 10th identical post over the last 5 days… one of his fans posted a comment saying that seeing the same post five days in a row was “not enchanting” (which happens to be the name of Guy’s latest book).
Guy replied to the comment, “That’s what it takes to truly spread the word, and this is a free offer…”
While Guy is clearly an engaging personality and a perceived leader in social media, we’re probably not alone in thinking that this type of automated scheduled posting of identical posts isn’t one of the strategies we’d like to see more brands follow.
While Guy’s defense of this tactic is focused on clicks, what he doesn’t mention is that he’s using up brand credibility every time he hits his fans with multiple copies of clearly automated posts.
Do you think hitting the news feed over and over again with automated identical posts will strain the relationship between a brand and its fans?
Fortunately for Guy’s he’s still got some credibility to spare, but for a small brand to adopt his fully automatic machine gun auto status update approach for their Fan Page it seems like they’d be shooting themselves in the foot.
Full timetable of the repeated posts below:
Hmmm….a winning strategy for losing trust and creating frustration methinks. Would he say the same thing five times in a row in an in-person conversation to drive home his point? It probably wouldn’t be the best way to make new friends. It probably wouldn’t be the best way to make new friends. It probably wouldn’t be the best way to make new friends. It probably wouldn’t be the best way to make new friends.
I agree that repeating is boring! Maybe a great original blog post can be tweeted a few times but Guy’s approach is an old school marketing tactic which lacks a strategic vision that provides fresh relevant info to the audience on a daily basis…
Not a fan of this at all… I get that it gets more clicks/viewers, but how many people are hiding/unfollowing/getting pissed off about it? Probably a lot.
I’d be interested in seeing screenshots of the entire page, not just the one message. I’m not opposed the repeat posts (on Facebook and Twitter) as long as it isn’t back-to-back, over and over. If you set up an auto post for every day or every week, make sure you are all sharing ‘real’ updates outside of those repeated autoposts.
And really… All he has to do is change the wording and it wouldn’t be a big deal. Find a different way to say ‘Be sure to grab the free copies of my three books.’
His method might work statistically, but it is lazy and impersonal.
My repeated posts are not back to back. I have a lot of flow on my wall.
Also, I specifically do not “change the wording” so that it “wouldn’t be a big deal.” I think that’s the worse thing to do because people will read it and eventually figure out the changed wording is essentially the same post.I quite purposely keep it identical because this makes it EASIER to identify (and skip) something that one recognizes as a repeat. To change the wording to defeat this is to actively deceive the reader. If someone notices all these repeats, arguably, they’ve been on Facebook too long. Also, this articles focused on the one negative comment from 26,000 fans. How about considering all the people who downloaded the books who might have missed this opportunity if it were only posted once?As for your “probably a lot” of people are “hiding/unfollowing/getting pissed off,” take a look at this:http://monitor.wildfireapp.com/comparisons/151381/fans_followers/enchantment-on-facebook#&data=cumulative&range=30Note where the spike occurred.Guy
One of the comments says ‘now you are spamming’ – Wouldn’t recommend this strategy for smaller brands..
Love his books but his online brand drives me away
It’s very simple: it depends upon the value of the post. If it’s something worth reading – whether it’s a post or a contest/free offer, why would you NOT repost. If the average Facebook-er has roughly 600 ‘friends,’ their streams are full. If you post early morning, the late nighters will never see it. Perhaps 10 posts is a little much, but he’s Guy Kawasaki. He’s has already built up integrity and trust, and as much as people may complain, I bet very few of them have “unliked” his page.
It’s simple: It depends on the value of your content and how much your readers value YOU.
EXACTLY – depends upon the brand. But if you’ve got a great offer, a couple of times a day is NOT bad.
I said it in my own comment Guy, but it bears repeating – please don’t get pissed off and ‘unfollow’ me:
It depends on WHAT you are reposting & it’s value and WHO you are and how much trust you’ve already built. It makes COMPLETE sense to repeat valuable posts at various times through the day since MOST people won’t see it over and over again because they’re not on FB all day long, so your reach will be greater if you repeat.
So are we learning that Guy’s social graph has very few inter-connected branches? The idea of viral is that something of value will spread naturally or is that now “five minutes ago” thinking?
I wouldn’t autopost myself. But I do find that if I repeat a message, I do get more engagement over time. I do the posts manually though
I unfollowed him on Twitter months ago– too much noise, too little signal.
I used to follow him on Twitter – but soon got tired of getting nailed with automated repeats regularly. It just wasn’t worth it for me – I want to get to know him, not see the same content post over and over. In my opinion, a couple times on something really important is “okay,” but don’t make it a habit.
…and this is why history repeats itself? I guess, we need to get reminded by repeating stuff and yet, we never learn…
I agree – I don’t think that his approach is intuitively sound for Facebook.
Are you apposed to auto-posting or repeating posts? Two different things. Reposting ‘hot’ articles makes sense given that 3-7% of your Facebook followers see your content. As the daily river of content flows on Twitter/Facebook, you see very little of it when you jump in the river periodically throughout the day. Yes, some people will see articles twice but my guess is very few do.
Secondly, auto-posting if done right is not bad. Don’t you auto-post your email newsletter to all your subscribers? You write it once and share it with your all. Same thing in social. Overloading your stream is another issue but thoughful autoposting can be effective.
If we have to repeat an ad so many times, it is something wrong with Internet Marketing… LOL… what is all the internet users will do the same….