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Social Media : Make dust or eat dust?

It seems inevitable that for brands and businesses,  the conversation turns to  “How do we use Social Media to grow our brand”.  Everyone is jumping on the  Blog-Facebook-Twitter bandwagon, but really – how should brands leverage off social media? This week I sat in on a meeting with a “prospective website” client (who is a […]

03-06-14 13:29

It seems inevitable that for brands and businesses,  the conversation turns to  “How do we use Social Media to grow our brand”.  Everyone is jumping on the  Blog-Facebook-Twitter bandwagon, but really – how should brands leverage off social media?

This week I sat in on a meeting with a “prospective website” client (who is a very reputable public speaker, motivator and coach) and a developer (who is developing his website).   The client wants a site to engage, via social media, with his community and to share his content, tips and tools.   The developer stated that the client should not ever create content that “sends traffic to other sites” .  He said for SEO (thats Search Engine Optimisation) he should only ever create “original content to keep people on your site”   Well, I could not disagree more, and if we adopt a attitude (even for good reason) of hogging the limelight, using social media which is all about sharing, then surely we’ve lost the plot?

I’ll demonstrate with an example of excellent use of social media .   KFC is all about sharing good moments, right?  Well, they launched a flashmob at an Idols audition in Soweto.  It was the right time, the right place and it embodies the spirit of good times which is just perfectly on brand for KFC.  People joined in, they filmed it and saved it on their mobile phones, they sent the clips to to their friends, they watched it at home, at church, in bars, they put it on the facebook pages, they appeared in an edit that appeared on TV and is stored on the web.  It is everybody’s little moment of fame, and it was fun.

To get people to talk about you with others, is “social media”. How you talk about yourself or generating content for the sake of your Google ranking,  is going to be short-lived, and tbh its boring.  In the time of information overload, it really is time to think out the box to generate content worth sharing. It’s that age old nugget, “Make dust, or eat dust”.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6i1SdxxjUY

Tags: rant