(From 2500 to over 10300 followers in six under six months with
only 756 tweets, including retweets)
There’s a lot written in
social media blogs about ‘content’. And
when I say social media blogs, I mean ones written by professionals, those of
us who work in social media. ‘Content’
by the way is what you post, the text, the pictures and videos that you put up
on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The
professionals need to call it content as it makes it sound like a product and
to be professional you have to have a product.
Which is why I like what I do.
As it’s a government
account, I’m not trying to sell anything.
I’m also limited in what I can post as it’s mainly used for press
reasons, anything else that is posted (content) is just general PR to tell
people what we do and make sure they know how to contact us.
So is the ‘Content king’ as
they like to say? Not even
slightly. People do not ‘follow’ or ‘like’
you because you are constantly posting interesting content.
Why do you friend and unfriend
people on your own account? You want to
know what they are saying and you no longer want to know. The fact that I managed to get so many new
followers isn’t anything to do with my creativity in saying the same thing over
and over again in different ways. It’s
because people want to know what my organisation is saying because what we say
is important to them.
The same is true if you run
a corporate account for a large department store chain or anything where you
want to try to sell something. People follow
you because you have something they want, when they no longer want it, they
will lose interest.
I’ve read a lot about how
much and often content should be posted, but frankly it’s bollocks. You should only post if you have something to
say, and the same goes for your personal account. I will quite happily unfriend someone who
posts a lot of random crap all the time, but the people who don’t post, they
become a ghost, someone who is there and I am happy to leave there, as they don’t
bother me anymore.
I’m not afraid of ghosts.
But the ones that put out a
ridiculous amount of posts, trying to get new followers and likes, it’s a bit,
well, desperate. It’s like the kid in
the playground shouting out “like me, I’m funny!” They are just another wannabe community radio
presenter, a noise in the background no one listens to.
Maybe it has to be different
for them, they have to worry about ROI (return of investment) another word to
make it look like content is a product.
They need to somehow make people think that they are generating enough
trade to pay their wages.
And if you talk about
annoying TV adverts, then they you talk about the company, so if they annoy you
with ‘content’, you’ll talk about it right?
Say what you need to say,
when you have to say it, and say it for a reason.
