I really am enjoying helping people understand what they do and say in the online social spaces is how people see them in real life. However, it seems there is a growing number of people online who are ingrain into appearing negative really don’t care what or how they look online. Some of these people are great people to know, but have just drank to much bad marketers’ Kool-Aid. Hopefully they will move out of the 1999 method of social spamming and move towards social media.
Linksters Out of Control
The conversation does get a little testy when I run into individuals who feel social media is nothing but a marketing tool or only use the social networks as a place to generate content towards their SEO goals. Most of them see what they are doing as nobody else’ business. Really?
Somewhere between the time the funds they transferred through their PayPal account to some so called marketing guru to when they signed up for a sophisticated content feed aggregator that spams all social spaces with ONLY Links to articles, there was a spilt second when they understood what social media really means. After that it was .., ‘Game on! It’s All about me!
One of the most frustrating aspects of explaining social media and training on how social media really works to someone new to the internet is dealing with the questions they have about what and who they see online in the social spaces. By far, the people who post nothing but ‘Links’ populate over 80% of the timeline feeds for any of the social networks. On Twitter is nearing 90%. This extreme volume of lower valued content hits the new interneters like a firehose. Plus, this method of populating the social space with content has nothing to do with being ‘Social’.
Disturbing Reasoning
What I have found to be the most disturbing is the reasons the links-only people give on why becoming a ‘Linksters’ is their prefer method of social media. In the interviews I have had with the few people I have gotten to discuss, in a civil tongue, why they use only Links in their social feed I found nearly all of them are doing it with perceived aspirations of increasing viewer traffic to something, which relates in some form to making MONEY!
True, over 90% of the people online spend over 50% of their time marketing, in some form, who they are and what they do professionally. This still leaves a huge ocean of people online for the social aspects the internet provides. Unfortunately, this sea of people are seen by the marketers of the world as nothing but Consumers. These people are the targets of these desperate, non-social, methods of marketing.
Several reasons have been given for why people just place ‘Links’ in their social feeds. Following are the reasons given from the 22 people I have interviewed:
8 Told it was the best method of posting content to the social networks as part of developing my ‘Digital Footprint’ 7 Have plenty of real friends, don’t have time to be social. 5 Really just doing what my (Web designer..SEO Manager…Digital Marketing Coach) is telling me to do. 2 I really don’t care how others see me, I feel I am providing my community vital information
Most of the time the Linksters do not realize how their posting of Nothing But Links appears to people online. Even more have little feelings towards the negative reputation they develop from not responding to people making comment to their posts.
80-10-10 Rule Still Prevails
Posting 80% original content on things you enjoy or like; 10% links to thinks you find important and 10% forwarding, sharing or reporting of someone else in your community’s content still is the prevailing rule to effective social media. This very simple formula is sometimes a hard pill for many to take since it does require something most of them will not manage… TIME.
Too many times the pressures of life for these misguided individuals pushes them to do things they probably would rather not do. Overall, the people who are out filling the social feeds with low valued content are doing so out of their lack of willingness to manage their time and lack of respect the people in their communities time.
Social Image: Make or Break
The internet is now a window into people’s souls. How you appear, what you do, what you say and, now, who you hangout with online all is how people judge you. Your appearance online is rapidly becoming the deciding factor on if someone wants to be in your community or not.
Social prevalence online is now becoming mandatory for most viewers. Viewers also have to manage their time online as well and only want to be surrounded by people who offer value ‘socially’. Everything viewers need that is non-social they go to Google to search, which again leads them into choosing the content they searched by how Social it appears to be.
The questions viewers ask today when viewing content are:
- What does this person offer me of value?
- Is this person who I want to socialize with?
Social Media is, and has never been any but, based on being Social. The more social a person is…the more social a company is..the more accepted the consumer, or viewer, will be. Posting Links to relevant information is part of providing a person’s community with valuable content, but when that is all they do their community eventually ends up be filled with other Linksters which turns into the a purgatory for the real people remaining in those communities.
Hopefully more people will learn or change to becoming more social before their reputation is tainted and they have to go through a –re-imaging process. Let me know how I can help.
Great blog, Scot. This hit home for me. I need to be more creative.