Over the past few days, we’ve been exploring the issues for why social media efforts fail (the dreaded start & stop, the inability to execute, and unrealistic expectations). Here’s another pitfall: social media content that exclusively or mostly features content about your company, brand, people, services, products and news.
As much as social media can be used to distribute corporate news, it is not a corporate broadcast medium that is all about you. In an ideal world, there is a healthy amount of corporate news but it’s mixed with content about industry news, developments, trends and people.
This kind of content provides the editorial variety that engages people on a regular basis by providing something for everyone. It’s based on the old adage that variety is the spice of life.
Many companies fail with social media because they are too self-absorbed. They believe that social media should only be used to talk about or promote corporate activity. There is a place for this kind of thing but it can’t happen all the time otherwise your audience will quickly get a bad case of editorial fatigue.
As interesting as your company may be, there is only so much of you that people will accept – and even then it has to be part of a healthy, balanced editorial mix.
So what kind of content should company distribute other than about themselves? Some ideas include blog posts and news about industry news and developments, links to interesting services, videos and commentary about what’s happening.
By using social media to talk about things about than yourself, it means that when you do promote corporate activity, it’s accepted as opposed to rebuffed.
Tags: content, failure, Social Media, tips
This is a great point that I think many people forget. I remember one time hearing Chris Brogan speak and he suggested sending 12 tweets about other people/news to your 1 tweet about your company. Very good advice to follow.