Social media postings

I am presenting at LI philanthropy day tomorrow and the subject is social media on a shoestring. Or rather, the title. The good news is that there is a ton of material, the bad news is that I really don't know who I am presenting to and so picking 75 minutes worth of it for an unknown audience is a bit concerning.

As I was sorting through the piles of material and thousands of ideas that I have assembled, I realized one of the most key challenges is getting and maintaining the social media conversation. So I looked at my own conversations and what attracted me to respond to posts and I realized why it is so hard to get folks to read institutional/organizational postings: They are boring.

No really, they are. I manage a couple of sites and if I wasn't responsible for posting to them, I would pay minimal attention to much of what I put up (sorry for that...) the basic problem is that it isn't personal. We all have that friend who posts everything they do - what they had for breakfast, that they then brushed their teeth and then made lunch to take to work etc.... Most likely you also have that friend whose posts just shill for their Pampered Chef side business. In any case neither of those are folks you interact with, they just provide that background noise factor.

Conversely, those friends who you respond to, post a variety of material, sometimes relevant, sometimes not. Sometimes about themselves, sometimes not. In any case, they mix "me" and "not me." We need to let go of the institutional need for it to relate directly back to us and just carry on a conversation about the world. That is how you achieve full social media engagement.