When people thresh through their inbox or social media network, are you the grain that they find useful or the chaff that they throw away? People are selfish. They’re only going to listen to you if they find what you you’re saying to be valuable or interesting. With so many people tweeting and posting and producing content, there’s a limit to how many people anyone can read regularly.
I follow a lot of people on Twitter and a lot of them only tweet about their company or their products. Who wants to listen to that? Many business blogs are the same way – just covering company news and advertising products or services – basically just press releases. How boring.
If you’re going to make it through the threshing process you need to provide something of value – you need to be the grain. Think in terms of what your customers want to know (I doubt it’s pictures from your company picnic). What types of information do they regularly ask you about? Social media is about having a conversation – most of it should be about others – or listening. If most of your content is valuable, people will be more likely to listen when you occasionally talk about your own stuff (remember, people are selfish).
Are you the grain or the chaff?
(photo by KevinLallier @ Flickr CC)
This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting.
Pingback/Trackback
Are You the Grain or the Chaff? « Sazbean
steve weaver says:
Actually, I might be a thresher! I’ve only been doing social media a few months and I already get WAY too many “followers” on Twitter who focus solely on marketing. Since I have nothing to sell that lends itself to social media marketing, I can sort through and check out each follower. If they seem interesting, and are not all about marketing themselves, I return the follow. If they aren’t too interesting but aren’t “hawking their wares”, they can follow. The rest gets blocked….you only get one chance to make a first impression!