Good content and bad content

Sometimes my job is strange. Today, something happened that shouldn't have. I posted a picture, a collage of seven vehicles with a little safety message tacked on. It was only posted just for a toy company to have a look at our range of trucks and it became very quickly the most successful posting ever on Facebook. Now what is so strange about it is the trucks weren't doing anything sexy, five of them were parked, sitting there doing nothing.

Now again this is just like an earlier blog below, but more stranger. People have liked us and followed us to see what we say, and in this post,mew said nothing, nothing at all. Or at least nothing we hadn't said many, many times before. Which again leads me to one conclusion. Social media is a very strange type of work.

We are all looking for something that will go viral, but no one can say what will go viral. Anyone who makes a viral video on YouTube that was seen by 5 million people in 1 week would probably admit in the bar, when no one is listening that they have 19 videos with 1000 views between them.  If you build it, they will come only works for baseball fields in the middle of nowhere. Social media is much more hit and miss.

If you look at your followers on twitter, ask yourself how many are friends? If you have several thousand, ask yourself how many you already follow? How many of them look at your links, your photos, or even read your content other than cursory look? Odds are not very many, which is a depressing thought, because if you don't care about what others are posting, do you really think anyone cares about yours?

If you have a lot of followers, say well over a 1000, but only following a few, have a look at your avi. Are you an attractive woman? if so, how many of your followers are women, and how many men are only interested when you post a photo of yourself? If you are happy with that, I'm happy for you.

In case you think that I'm jealous, I'm not, I can get love on hate on my work account, pick up 50 followers a day on it.  My personal account is just for fun, and I barely post on it. I'm more proud that I only personally know a couple of my followers and one I've never met is a very good friend now, so that to me is a success.

Sorry, I seemed to have rambled a bit of topic there, this is meant to be about what you post.

Basically I'm saying, that what you post could be anything, there are no rules to what is good, what people are likely to want to see, just content. There is no such thing as good content, or bad content. To paraphrase William Goldman, the screenwriter when talking about the films The Postman and Titanic, "there is content people want to see and content they don't".

I hope everyone always wants to see your content.

(This was an interesting and very honest blog about working in social media, if you want to know what it's like, have a read.....http://socialmediatoday.com/rachel-strella/1255821/5-tips-avoiding-social-media-burnout)

Your opinion is wrong

Social media is kind of weird. You have to keep creating interesting content to keep people hooked, and of course there are the people who get annoyed with you. Everything says you should try and talk to those you upset, but to be honest, I can't be arsed with that. Quite simply some people are too stupid to engage with. A very intelligent man once said, that stupid questions should be ignored. A very wise statement.

So anyway, this very small group of people don't like me, or to be fair, they don't like that their argument is so weak it needs them to shout and be insulting when they don't like the answers. I'm a great believer in science and what it can teach us, and it teaches us one thing, to change our minds. We once thought that we sat at the centre of the universe with the stars spinning around us. We now know that is wrong, and we changed our minds. This is because facts change opinions.  No matter how strong our opinions are, opinions cannot change facts.

It's important to remember that, and that you will sometimes need to change your mind. I'm not an expert,but I understand that if I want facts I go to the experts, who give me the facts that will change my mind. If I don't like those facts, my opinion is wrong.

And this what I'm getting at. If you work in social media, then you have to put up with those people, the trolls. It's a pain in the arse, but then so is sitting on an uncomfortable chair, and I'd rather do that than stand all day.

It's an opinion and a fact.