Not too long ago, there was a host of people who decided to lock or close their Twitter accounts, their Facebook accounts etc…
They claimed a variety of reasons contributed to the decision like:
- No one cares about their updates.
- They are “time sucks”, or a waste of time.
- They have no marketing value.
- They don’t send clicks that “convert” well.
- And on…and on…whine, moan, groan and complain.
Are we SO addicted to these sites, that we’ve lost the ability to control when and how we use them? Is there some rule that says we MUST spend “X” amount of time every day in a Twitter stream or something?
Nope…last time I checked none of those exist.
Sooooo… why cut the ties? Do the accounts do some magic harm to your business if you don’t use them every single day…week…month…or even year? Come on people.
First of all, people really don’t care about updates unless they matter to them as an individual…second, unless YOU initiate a damn conversation, how could you possibly expect to really get someone’s attention?…and third, well these sites are classified social for a reason right?
And, before I get a barrage of emails, no I’m not discounting the importance of cross posting certain pieces of your own content on your social media sites like Twitter and Facebook (I do it). All I’m really pointing to is your expectations of doing so have to be realistic.
It’s amazing to me how we imagine what could happen when we post something on the social media sites (it will go viral to like a million people)…but folks, for the most part, ‘dat isn’t gonna happen.
(yes, there are exceptions, like media-spun gossip and very important content that typically affects people’s lives on a large scale)
So, let’s get real about social media as it applies to “marketing value”, it’s about the conversation, not the content.
Business is, and always will be about people, people.
So if you plan on using social media effectively, do exactly that, plan your usage of it to focus on a very specific conversation (i.e. personally address your followers, then actually maintain the conversations that results)…and limit your usage to a very specific and planned timeframe.
Don’t waste your life on the social media… if you want to create results instead, use it to do what it was invented for…to be friggin social.
Duh.
