Do you put your chocolate in the fridge?

Every Social Media book I've read this year is super keen to stress how important 'good content' is, and they all resist trying to explain what actually makes good content, in doing so they end up preaching to the converted, after all does anybody actually go out of their way to put bad content on their Social Media strategy?

In principal of course they're right. good content has to be the driving force behind all of your social media, successful engagement with your customers doesn't happen by bombarding them with product information, deals and idle boasts about how amazing you are, it comes from stories, in which customers can react, find themselves, and comment on.

Here's what I mean, I've got 2 Facebook accounts, my personal and my Citizen Page, comparing the numbers on this, I have over 700 Likes for Citizen and around 300 Friends on my personal account, but activity levels on my personal account exceed the Citizen page probably 10-fold. Here's an example;

Recently I posted a great logo I did for Colour Films, and managed to get about 2 'Likes' and no 2 comments out of it, now compare this to a question I asked about 'chocolate being refrigerated' that got over 20 comments and a bunch of 'Likes'. What this demonstrates is people don't care about how great you are, but they are comfortable engaging in something they've got an opinion on. If I'd have posted the logo with a question 'just created this, do you like it' it probably would have had more traction than just bragging about how good I thought it was.

Pretty basic stuff I know! Ask your audience question, that's Social Media 1.0, but what's interesting is how this demonstrates that it's essential for brands to appear human. People don't want to comment on or talk to a brand page that has no personality, that is all about the work, and that doesn't have the time to engage people in off topic and seemingly trivial subject matter. Why should they? There's nothing in it for them, people have more choices and less time than ever before, so don't cry if they don't give a shit how good your logo is and they'd much rather watch a monkey going backwards on a pig.

The creation of good content is a mystery, it can't be identified in a way you explain, it's about so many different factors. It's about responding to events, posting at the right time of day, reacting to arguments, being flippant, being reactionary, being stupid or opinionated and just not sounding like a made-up idea, of what you think your customers perceive as 'professional'.

Brand pages need to be about the people that run them, increasingly I'm considering just being my brand page, why should they be separate things? I 'am' what I do, and admittedly I'm not sure I want my customers to see all of the photos of me on Facebook, but more importantly, I do want my brand to be a living breathing thing, something with stories and something that people want to have in their lives. If you do this right it doesn't matter what your product or service is,, forget about selling all the time, make connections that people can carry with them, refer, develop and eventually use.

Now, I always put all my chocolate in the fridge, how about you?

Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk

Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk

Or call 07738 175 614