Your Friends Aren’t Your Hungry People

I’m moving in a different direction on social media. Well, personal social media anyway.

There are multiple schools of thought about whether small companies with well-known leaders should share content on their company platforms or their personal social media platforms.

  • On one extreme, companies only share content on company channels, to better establish the brand of WidgetCorp or whatever.
  • On the other extreme, company heads only share content on their personal channels because their personal connections are so important to the company’s success. In fact, these company heads may not even bother to create separate company pages.

Obviously, most companies and company heads adopt a “do both” tactic. Maybe the company head reshares company posts. Or maybe the company reshares company head posts.

Or they do something that John Bredehoft and Bredemarket have done in the past: share the same content on both the company and the personal channels.

I might not do that any more.

The experiment

The rationale behind sharing company posts on your personal channels is that your personal friends like you and will engage with your company posts.

But this rationale ignores one very pertinent fact: most of my friends have NO interest in identity, biometrics, cybersecurity, or related technologies.

Why would they engage with such content if it doesn’t interest them?

  • I’d share Bredemarket Facebook content to my personal Facebook feed…and with very few exceptions I’d end up with crickets.
African field cricket, Gryllus bimaculatus. By Arpingstone – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=620363.
  • Or I’d share some Bredemarket LinkedIn content to my personal LinkedIn account. Often…crickets.
  • But most painful of all was when I would share Bredemarket Instagram posts to my Instagram stories. Higher impressions then the same stories on the Bredemarket account…but absolutely no engagement. Crickets again.

So on Monday afternoon I intentionally conducted an experiment on my personal Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn accounts, where together I have a combined 3,396 connections. My Monday afternoon identity/biometric and product marketing-related content received a total of 9 engagements…and that’s counting the Instagram user who requested “Can u share it @canadian.icon”).

Even acccounting for the three algorithms involved…that’s low.

And it…um, prompted me to ask myself a “why” question.

Why share corporate content on personal feeds?

Good question.

So for now I’m “moving in a different direction” (a few of you know where THAT phrase originated) and not bothering to share Bredemarket content on my personal feeds. At least for now.

  • Those who are dying to see Bredemarket content will subscribe to the appropriate Bredemarket Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn feeds.
  • But frankly, my friends have no need or desire to see Bredemarket content, so they won’t.

In my case, my high school friends, church friends, and even some of my former coworkers (who left the identity/biometric industry years ago) are NOT Bredemarket’s hungry people. So I’ll spare them the parade of wildebeests, wombats, and iguanas.

It’s all for you.

Bredemarket Writing Offerings as of May 29, 2025

Bredemarket’s current (as of 5/29/2025) writing offerings are listed below. To discuss, book a meeting at https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service
Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service
Bredemarket 4000 Long Writing Service
Bredemarket 4444 Partner Retainer

Your Product Marketing Audience is Small

Product and service marketing is deceptively easy…because there’s no need to market to everyone.

I just calculated the numbers. Of the world’s population (not counting non-person entities) a generous (!) maximum of 8,000 people are hungry and interested in buying the services Bredemarket provides. 

The true number is probably more like 800, but let me fantasize for a moment.

Unreal fantasy.

Or to put it another way, 99.9999% of people have absolutely no interest in Bredemarket.

(Not) Spreading the word about my guest post 

This affects how I market things.

For example, when I wrote my guest post on May 6, I spread the word via my own blog and social channels. Including all the repurposing.

But I didn’t privately contact people and gloat about my byline.

Well, with two exceptions. Because I wrote briefly (one sentence) about third-party risk management, I privately alerted two TPRM professionals who wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

“Employ third-party risk management (TPRM) to minimize the risk when biometric data is stored with cloud providers, application partners, and companies in the supply chain.”

Pearls and ice

Other than that, I engaged in no private messaging, even to long-standing biometric professionals.

  • Some of the biometric professionals saw my blog or social mentions of the guest post and were duly impressed.
  • Others likely saw my blog or social mentions and didn’t care one bit.
  • The rest never saw my blog or social mentions, which meant that they didn’t actively follow Bredemarket, which again meant that they didn’t care at all.

The whole pearls before swine story plays here. 

Or selling ice makers to Eskimos. 

A lost cause.

Whatever example you prefer, there’s no need to market your product to those who don’t give a REDACTED about it. 

You can’t overcome indifference.

(All pictures from Imagen 4)

You Missed Out By Not Creating Content Sooner

I just saw an ad for one of those smartphone apps that claims to make money for you.

The normal pitch is that if you install the app today, then you can make money in the future (pay for your next coffee).

But the ad I just saw had a much more effective hook.

The woman in the ad regretted that she hadn’t installed the app two months ago, because then she would have money TODAY.

Fear of missing out (FOMO)? This woman was paying the price for ALREADY missing out. Two months of extra income gone…forever.

So naturally I wanted to adapt this “you already missed out” message to Bredemarket content creation.

But there’s a problem.

Unlike the money apps, Bredemarket does not promise that its content will deliver sales to identity, biometrics, and technology firms this month.

In fact, it may take up to 17 months for my content to generate sales.

“It takes longer than three days for content marketing to yield results. One source estimates four to five months. Another source says six to twelve months. Joe Pulizzi (quoted by Neil Patel) estimates 15 to 17 months. And all the sources say that their estimates may not apply to your particular case.”

But…

…What if you were around back in June 2023 when I revived Bredemarket?

And what if you saw my June 1, 2023 updates post?

And what if you acted on its call to action?

“Which reminds me…if you need Bredemarket’s services:

“Send me an email at john.bredehoft@bredemarket.com.

“Or go to calendly.com/bredemarket to book a meeting with me.

“Or go to bredemarket.com/contact/ to use my contact form.”

And what if we met and I created content for you by June 30, 2023?

That content could have delivered sales throughout 2025…if not earlier.

But…YOU MISSED OUT.

Don’t make that mistake again. Let Bredemarket help you create content now: https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

Solving Problems vs. Problem-solving

Marketers, let’s return to school and talk about the difference between solving problems and problem-solving. Afterwards we’ll go back to work.

Marchetti SP and P-S

Some time in 2008 or earlier, Carolyn Marchetti heard this:

“Problem-solving is what you do when you don’t know how to solve a problem.”

She contrasts this with solving problems, where you apply known techniques to a problem that has already been solved.

Marchetti approaches this from an education perspective, where students ideally learn solving problems AND problem-solving.

Shah SP and P-S

This distinction is not unique to Marchetti’s anonymous speaker. Sam J. Shah, also dealing with students, notes the need for problem-solving in certain scientific disciplines:

“[M]ost of the work done in fields as sterile as combinatorics or as messy as molecular biology involves navigating corridors of inquiry, trying (and often failing) to draw connections, and coming up with new lenses with which to look at problems. Frustration and dead ends are part and parcel of working in these fields.”

Bredemarket SP and P-S

We encounter these issues outside of school when we go to work.

  • For businesses, Bredemarket usually solves problems: your prospects don’t know about you, your prospects don’t know why they should care about you, your prospects lack information. There are known solutions.
  • Occasionally, Bredemarket engages in problem-solving, where there are questions without clear answers, and you and I work together to determine how to move forward.

Your company probably needs to both solve tactical problems and perform strategic problem-solving.

How?

I’ve worked on both the strategic and tactical levels. Let’s talk. https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

(Imagen 4)

What is the Form I-9?

I am clearly not the Form I-9 expert—see Janice Kephart and her company ZipID for the full understanding. But this introduces why we have the U.S. Form I-9, how it keeps employers and employees within the law, and what it can do to stop North Koreans from robbing companies blind.

Why

Someone can’t just waltz into a U.S. employer and start working. Legally, anyway.

While there are numerous requirements that you have to meet before starting a job, the one that concerns us here is that only certain people are legally authorized to work.

To check this is a two part process:

  • To check the identity of the person.
  • To check the employment authorization of the person.

Both are necessary. It does no good to determine that Sam Smith is authorized if Sam Smith is really Kim Jong Spy.

Now you don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to work here. I’ve worked with a number of green card holders from France and other countries. I’ve worked with a number of temporary visa holders in which the visa permits the person to work for pay.

But student visa holders usually can’t work.

And people who are just visiting the country usually can’t work.

And finally, people who slip across the border can’t work.

How

So how do we make sure that people who work here are identified and authorized?

Via the completion of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Form I-9.

“Use Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to verify the identity and employment authorization of individuals hired for employment in the United States. All U.S. employers must properly complete Form I-9 for every individual they hire for employment in the United States. This includes citizens and aliens. Both employees and employers (or authorized representatives of the employer) must complete the form.”

The employee starts the ball rolling by proving that they are who they say they are, and that they are authorized to work here. To do this, they provide information and documents, including at least some of the following:

  • Full name
  • Address
  • Date of birth
  • Social Security Number (not a Taxpayer Identification Number)
  • U. S. citizenship or immigration status (there are multiple options here, ranging from U.S. citizen to “alien authorized to work”)
  • Other numbers as necessary, such as a USCIS number
  • One or more of “List A,” “List B,” and/or “List C” documents

The most powerful of the acceptable documents are List A documents, which prove both identity and employment authorization. A U.S. Passport or a Permanent Resident Card are the most common documents here, but if you have a passport from the Federated States of Micronesia you may still be good to go.

Passport, Federated States of Micronesia.
Blagomeni • CC BY-SA 3.0. Source.

If you don’t have a List A document, then you need one List B (identity) and one List C (authorization) document.

  • List B includes driver’s licenses (REAL ID or no, even Canadian), school ID cards, voter IDs, tribal documents, and others that establish identity in some way.
  • List C includes Social Security cards, birth certificates, and other authorization documents.

After the employee provides all this and completes Section 1 of Form I-9, the employer checks it and completes Section 2 of the form. The documentation must “reasonably” appear to be genuine. 

What

But…if this whole system relies on the employer saying “looks good to me,” how does this keep Kim Jong Spy from illegally working at Palantir and stealing state secrets and American technology?

One, the information and the document checks are worth something. While an employer is unable to truly verify that a driver’s license or a passport is not fraudulent—especially if the remote employee never visits the employer in person—you can bet that USCIS checks all those numbers, and if 10 people use the same Social Security Number they will be flagged.

Two, employers that repeatedly flaunt U.S. employment law can get in trouble. As I detailed in a LinkedIn post, this could include five years of prison time.

So that’s a powerful disincentive for unintentionally or intentionally hiring Kim Jong Spy.

And if the Form I-9 seems like a lot of work, and you wish you could automate it…see ZipID. In addition to everything else, it can compare a live face with the submitted photo ID…because.

Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie, and Chevrolet…in the UK

I needed a blog post idea for Monday, when my U.S. “hungry people” will be satiating themselves at Memorial Day cookouts.

So I thought of a 1970s feel-good U.S. commercial that makes no sense to our friends (if they still like us) across the pond.

For starters, the UK won’t watch baseball on Monday. They will watch cricket.

And hot dogs? People at a cricket match are more likely to consume sausage sandwiches, or fish and chips, or curry dishes, or pies.

Speaking of pies, it’s not what you think.

“Steak and Kidney Pie – It is a classic British pie filled with chunks of beef steak and kidneys cooked in a rich gravy.

“Chicken and Mushroom Pie – This pie is made with tender pieces of chicken combined with mushrooms in a creamy sauce, which is then encased in pastry.

“Cornish Pasty – Although Cornish Pasty is not a pie, many refer to it as a handheld pie. It is a pastry filled with diced meat, potatoes, and vegetables.

“Shepherd’s Pie – A minced lamb or beef pie is topped with mashed potatoes in this preparation.”

And on and on through other meats, but no apple pie on the list. (And forget about pumpkin pie.)

Cars

Which brings us to the British equivalent of the Chevrolet. In the 1970s, I’m not certain that Chevrolet was “America’s favorite car”—sister GM brand Oldsmobile may have held that title numerically. But “Chevy” vied with Ford as the sentimental favorite in the 1970s. 

Today America’s favorite car is the Toyota.

But what of the United Kingdom? Obviously not everyone could afford a Rolls Royce. They were buying Fords in 1975, primarily the Cortina and the Escort. I owned an Escort here in the U.S. many years later, but never owned a Cortina, a primarily UK auto related to the Taurus.

Today the UK’s favorite car is Volkswagen.

You feel safest of all.

What’s Your Opinion of My Performance?

A lot of U.S. identity, biometric, and technology marketers like baseball. But some of you don’t know about the time that Paul Olden asked losing Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda a now-infamous question, “What’s your opinion of [Dave] Kingman’s performance?” (Lasorda’s response—edited—can be heard here.)

(Incidentally, while the picture of Lasorda looks realistic, it is not. Imagen 4 generated it.)

But any of us who write online worry about our own performance, whether we publicly admit it or not.

Why do the wrong things enjoy stellar performance?

Take Becca Chambers, who like the rest of us wants to perform well, but observed:

“There’s a direct inverse relationship between how much time I spend on a post and how well it performs.”

It’s happened to Becca, it’s happened to me, and it’s probably happened to you. Chances are that this post and its social reshares will NOT reach tens of thousands of views, but my trivial observations about silly stuff will. 

For me, these random posts delivered big numbers.

The performance that matters

But in the end, do impressions matter? I constantly remind myself not to chase impressions, and to that end offered this comment on Chambers’ post:

“Depends upon how you measure “performance.”

“If you measure performance based solely on impressions, then you can realize great performance by random succinct thoughts on ghosting or the em dash or whatever.

“But if you measure performance by your paying consulting client saying that they liked your post on an obscure topic that only you and the client care about…then say what you need to say to your hungry people (target audience) and don’t worry about getting 20,000 impressions or 500 likes.”

And if we need any confirmation about the temporary nature of impressions, let’s look at Dave Kingman’s performance for the Chicago Cubs on May 14, 1978. “Three homers, 8 RBI,  3 runs, 4 hits, 1 walk, 13 Total bases.” Plus an uncountable number of expletives from manager Lasorda.

By 1981 Kingman was a New York Met.

What about your performance?

So how do you create content that truly matters to people who will buy from you? By asking yourself some important questions and then developing the content.

And if you’re an identity, biometric, or technology firm that needs help to get content out now (rather than never), talk to Bredemarket. Not about bridges, but about your prospects. Book a free meeting: https://bredemarket.com/cpa/