The Bleeding Edge
Everyone clamors to join the latest and greatest apps, tools, and social networks. There’s a mixed excitement and fear that drives us to maintain the appearance of relevance, and one of the easiest ways is to be on the forefront of whatever is happening.
I heard someone say, “It’s better to have no profile on a social network than to have one that sucks.” And while I abhor the thought of not claiming your profile, I agree with this statement.
Social media has always been about… duh… being social. Here are some stellar ways to screw that up.
3 Losing Approaches to Social
- Create nothing. Only duplicate other people’s content.
- Avoid social like it’s the plague.
- Duplicate your own content across all social networks.
Let’s take a look at each one.
#1 Create Nothing. Just Duplicate Other People’s Stuff.
What a losing proposition. I understand the temptation, though:
We need to be found on social, but we have nothing to say. We’ll share resources to other people’s stuff! That makes us a valuable resource.
No, it makes you a scraper. And that’s fine if your actual business model revolves around connecting one type of person with a relevant third party product. But most companies aren’t merely middle men. So why treat social like you are?
#2 Avoid Social Networks At All Costs
The most popular reason for avoiding social networks: executives who don’t understand them. Without a vision of what social can do for your business, it’s better to stick your head in the sand and pretend they don’t exist.
Only problem is, they DO exist, and your competitor is going to think up a way to make use of them that makes you look obsolete.
But we don’t have the staff to create content. Then hire someone or sub it out. This is basic business principles here, not rocket science. Find out what your customers’ pain points are and speak to them. Answer their questions. Respond to the comments of non-customers and make a name for yourself online. There are plenty of options.
#3 Duplicate Your Content Across All Networks
The most deceptive of all the worst tactics. It sounds like a good idea to reach as many people as possible. Why not? That might work (but probably not) if all people only used one social network. Then you’d be capturing more eyeballs by blasting out to more networks.
With the advent of Google+, more and more people will be juggling 3 networks daily. There simply isn’t enough time in the day to spend sufficient time on each one. So use of each will specialize. And as that happens, people will want different content from each. Whether Twitter is your rss feed or your snarky comment conversation tool, you’ll get annoyed if Brand X is pushing the same message to you as you’ve already seen on Facebook and G+.
For most people, there’s not enough time in the day to wade through the INTERESTING content. How are YOU going to engage THEM?
