I've heard Pixar are making a new animation next year called 'The Ignorables', it's about a bunch of SMB's who have failed to grasp the basic concepts of Social Media, and who keep pumping out content so bland it makes them totally ignorable to their market.
It sounds really great, there's one company that doesn't even know that they're being ignored and continue to hammer their pointless message into the same pool of oblivious people, without ever recording how effective this is. It's like watching a bee smashing its face into the window over and over again as it tries to escape your house.
OK, assuming that you have 1000 followers on Twitter, this does not mean 1000 people are reading your message, it's just nothing like the case, although having said that my wife does treat her Twitter Stream like it's her email, and read everything that's on it every evening. (I've tried to tell her). It's impossible to say how many people are ignoring your messages but it's likely to be more than the people actually reading it.
The same goes for Facebook, your Like count could be massive, but you don't know how many of those people have Unsubscribed to your posts. Let's be honest here, we've all followed a friends company, and then hid their feed once it started to get too busy. I know people have hidden the Citizen feed, once I posted a blog that mentioned a load of my friends, and none of them commented, but hey, I don't mind. There's not even a tear in my eye, it's just a bloody eye lash...
The big message of the Pixar movie is not to rest on your numbers, Social Media is no longer (it probably never was) a land grabbing numbers game. Nobody cares if you've got 10,000 Likes, you bought off FiveSquids, and out of the 20 real people in there, they all hid you, it means nothing to have 500 Followers on Twitter that ignore your Tweets. What you're looking for is small numbers of interested and relevant followers, focussed clusters of Likes from people relevant to your service that together give you a pool of real relevant contacts.
The Ignorables are making it harder for the rest of us, if they understood the importance of focus, there'd be more time, more focus and more clicks to go round for those who need and deserve them, and the people with really creative energy wouldn't have to shout to loud to get heard.
Get in touch ben@citizenstudios.co.uk
Visit www.citizenstudios.co.uk
Or call 07738 175 614
4 comments:
I would NEVER ignore you.
Sorry, did somebody say something? Only joshing.. I'm listening! ...and now ranting because it's monday morning and I am 'reading my emails'.
It's amazing how many 'big' companies can't do this 'social media thing' right. One of our clients (no names) runs a facebook page with over 1000 likes. Traffic is driven through a big print campaign at clever customer touch points... yet the facebook is run like complaints department. For such a fun brand that has a tonne of personality there's no excuse for why the news feed is so dull and predictable! The 90's called... they want their robot internet mumsy back.
Rant continued... If you don't have a social media strategy: don't create a twitter / facebook account!. Otherwise it puts you on the map... (in a bad way) and gives people a place to slay you from the comfort of their sofa. If you don't do it properly and grab the bull by the horns (steer conversation, influence the experience)... your facebook / twitter becomes a breeding ground for unhappy customer experiences. Marketeers are familiar with bombarding us with messages but online... quality of posts rules, not quantity!.. or else the 'hide all posts from' button gets clicked... and then you're on mute!
Steeeeeempy, you eeeeediot!
Great stuff Mogs, 'don't be on mute' awesome.
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