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.
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.
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.
Similarly, this Bredemarket blog post that mentions both the Shipley Business Development Lifecycle and the ? and the Mysterians song “96 Tears” (geddit?) continues to rack up views week after week, having amassed over 3,000 views since its 2021 publication.
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/
My current clients realize the importance of a consistent presence, even without my help. They’re always reminding prospects of the benefits of their solutions.
Some of my former clients and non-clients never grasped that importance.
That’s NOT breaking news.
That’s why they are former clients and non-clients; they didn’t need me, or anyone else. One last blogged in February…February 2024. Wonder how many new prospects found THAT company today?
If you don’t want to escape the fate of anonymity, save time and stop reading here. If you want to escape this, read here…and better still, act by booking a meeting at https://bredemarket.com/cpa/
There are some things that I don’t bother to share in the Bredemarket blog, but instead just share to my socials.
This morning, I shared a story about the third-party risk management firm Whistic to LinkedIn’s Bredemarket Technology Firm Services page.
From LinkedIn.
You can see an oft-used Bredemarket technique: rather than sharing everything from a third party (geddit?) article, I only share a bit of it, then encourage the reader to click on the link to see the rest of the content. Makes everybody happy. What could go wrong?
Then I shared the same story to Facebook’s Bredemarket Technology Firm Services page.
Or tried to.
First attempt to share to Facebook
Facebook removed the post, accusing me of using “misleading links or content to trick people.”
I’m so devious that even I couldn’t figure out what I did.
Until I re-read the post and noticed this parenthetical comment.
(And one more key finding. Read the article.)
Doesn’t seem like a trick to me, but I explicitly urged people to leave Facebook’s walled garden and read something.
I do this all the time—Facebook is the second most popular traffic source for Bredemarket, after Google—but apparently the way I did it in the Whistic post was a trick to Facebook’s readers.
Second attempt to share to Facebook
The solution was simple: repost the article WITHOUT the offensive parenthetical comment.
So I did.
And Facebook removed the post again.
This isn’t the first time Facebook has rejected content that other platforms accepted without question…including other Meta platforms such as Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
I was this close to ceasing content sharing on Facebook altogether.
But then I had an idea.
Now I’m engaging in real trickery
If I am offending Zuck by using text to supposedly trick people into clicking on a link…
…what would happen if I ONLY posted a link with no text at all?
And rather than posting the text of interest in Facebook’s walled garden…
…I put the text of interest in the Bredemarket blog, along with the Whistic link that offended Facebook so much?
Then I could share it on character-limited platforms such as Threads and Bluesky.
You see the irony here. For a while I’ve strived to place social content natively on each platform. Now the platforms are forcing me to place the real content on a platform I control.
And the text would look something like this:
What I tried to say this morning
Every year, Whistic surveys hundreds of Risk-Management and Information Security leaders to understand the trends, challenges, and opportunities that are actively shaping the third-party risk management (TPRM) industry.
In 2025, the average company in our survey works with 286 vendors—up by 21% versus last year….That increased demand comes with increased risk.
[C]ompanies are spending more time, more money, and more resources on TPRM, but still not meeting their own risk standards or reducing security events.
I’ve noticed that my LinkedIn posts on jobseeking perform much better than my LinkedIn posts on the technical intricacies of multifactor identity verification.
But maybe I can achieve both mass appeal and niche engagement.
Private Equity Talent Hunt and Emma Emily
A year ago I reposted something on LinkedIn about a firm called Private Equity Talent Hunt (among other names). As Shelly Jones originally explained, their business model is to approach a jobseeker about an opportunity, ask for a copy of the jobseeker’s resume, and then spring the bad news that the resume is not “ATS friendly” but can be fixed…for a fee.
The repost has garnered over 20,000 impressions and over 200 comments—high numbers for me.
It looks like a lot of people are encountering Jennifer Cona, Elizabeth Vardaman, Sarah Williams, Jessica Raymond, Emily Newman, Emma Emily (really), and who knows how many other recruiters…
…who say they work at Private Equity Talent Hunt, Private Equity Recruiting Firm, Private Equity Talent Seek, and who knows how many other firms.
If only there were a way to know if you’re communicating with a real person, at a real business.
KYC and KYB let companies make sure they’re dealing with real people, and that the business is legitimate and not a front for another company—or for a drug cartel or terrorist organization.
So if a company is approached by Emma Emily at Private Equity Talent Hunt, what do they need to do?
The first step is to determine whether Emma Emily is a real person and not a synthetic identity. You can use a captured facial image, analyzed by liveness detection, coupled with a valid government ID, and possibly supported by home ownership information, utility bills, and other documentation.
If there is no Emma Emily, you can stop there.
But if Emma Emily is a real person, you can check her credentials. Where is she employed today? Where was she employed before? What are her post secondary degrees? What does her LinkedIn profile say? If her previous job was as a jewelry designer and her Oxford degree was in nuclear engineering, Emma Emily sounds risky.
And you can also check the business itself, such as Private Equity Talent Hunt. Check their website, business license, LinkedIn profile, and everything else about the firm.
But I’m not a business!
OK, I admit there’s an issue here.
There are over 100 businesses that provide identity verification services, and many of them provide KYC and KYB.
To other businesses.
Very few people purchase KYC and KYB per se for personal use.
So you have to improvise.
Ask Emma Emily some tough questions.
Ask her about the track record of her employer.
And if Emma Emily claims to be a recruiter for a well-known company like Amazon, ask for her corporate email address.
Have you ever seen a piece of content that makes you ill?
I just read a week-old comment on a month-old LinkedIn post. The original poster was pursuing a new opportunity, and the commenter responded as follows:
“Incredible achievements! Your journey with GTM teams is truly inspiring. It’s exciting to see you ready to tackle the next challenge. What qualities do you value most when looking for your next venture?”
At least it didn’t have a rocket emoji, but the comment itself had a non-person entity (NPE) feel to it.
Not surprisingly, the comment was not from a person, but from a LinkedIn page.
And not a company page, but an industry-specific showcase page for the tech industry.
Needless to say, I see nothing wrong with that. After all, Bredemarket has its own technology LinkedIn showcase page, Bredemarket Technology Firm Services.
But when Bredemarket’s LinkedIn pages comment on other posts, I write the comments all by myself, and don’t let generative AI draft them for me. So my comments have none of these generic platitudes or fake engagement attempts that don’t work.
I have absolutely no idea why the “incredible achievements” comment was, um, “written” or what its goals were.
Awareness? Consideration? Conversion? Or mere Revulsion?
An unsolicited Instagram message offering paid placement in NY Weekly Magazine, from an Instagram account with no visible connection to the magazine, and only 1 follower.
Oh, and don’t respond to Sophi for the offer. Respond to a DIFFERENT Instagram account.
And the pitch? For me to appear in “Top 30 Female Leaders to Look Out For in 2025.” Doesn’t Sophi know that President Musk doesn’t allow that stuff any more?
I also get Instagram pitches to promote myself to Canadian users.
Meta is a worse cesspool than Microsoft (LinkedIn).
I just read a post by SentinelOne, but it’s too early to tell if this is just a string of buzzwords or a legitimate endeavor.
The post about a proposed “Autonomous SOC Maturity Model” (ASOCMM?) includes buzzwords such as “autonomous,” “SOC” (system and organizational controls, or security operations center – take your pick), “agentic AI,” and of course “maturity model.”
Having done my maturity model time during my days at Motorola Solutions predecessor Motorola (although our group stuck with CMM rather then moving on to CMMI), I’ve certainly seen the benefits and drawbacks of maturity models for organizations large and small. Or for organizations large: I shudder at the thought of implementing a maturity model at a startup; the learning curve at the Printrak part of Motorola was bad enough. You need to hit the target between no process, and process for process’ sake.
So what of this autonomous SOC maturity model? Perhaps it can be real.
“At SentinelOne, we see the Autonomous SOC through the lens of a maturity model. We welcome debate on where we, as an industry, are on this evolutionary revolution. We hope most will agree that this is a better way to look at Autonomous SOC innovation and adoption – far better than the binary, all-or-nothing debates that have long fueled analyst, vendor, and industry watcher blogs and keynotes.”
If nothing else, a maturity model approach lends (or can lend) itself to continuous improvement, rather than just checking off a box and saying you’re done. A Level 5 (or Level 4 on a 0-4 scale) organization, if it believes what it’s saying, is ALWAYS going to improve.
Bredemarket promotes itself in all sorts of places. My LinkedIn newsletter is an example, but there are other places where Bredemarket speaks, including the Bredemarket blog and a number of social channels.
The channels that Bredemarket uses have varied over time. While wise minds such as Jay Clouse have recommended to not spread yourself thin, I ignored his advice and found myself expanding from LinkedIn to TikTok. (TikTok is a Chinese-owned social media platform. You may have heard of it.)
Then in May 2024 I contracted my online presence, announcing that I was retreating from some social channels “that have no subscribers, exhibit no interest, or yield no responses.” After I had shed some channels, I ended up on a basic list of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Threads.
Now I may contract again, and I may expand again, but for now I want to touch upon the reasons why a business should post or not post on multiple social channels, and how the business can generate content for all those channels.
Why should you only post on a single social channel?
There is no right or wrong answer for every business, and there are some businesses that should only post on a single social channel.
If all your prospects are using a single social channel and are on NO OTHER channel, then you only need to post on that channel.
If you are NOT in danger of losing your account on that social channel because of some automated detection of a violation (“You violated one of the terms in our TOS. We won’t tell you which one. YOU figure it out.”), then you can continue to post on that channel and no other.
If the social channel is NOT in danger of business liquidation or forced government closure, then you can continue to post on that channel and no other.
Why should you post on multiple social channels?
Not all businesses satisfy all the criteria above. For one, your “hungry people” (target audience) may be dispersed among several social channels. From my personal experience, I know that some people only read Bredemarket content in my blog, some only read my content on LinkedIn, some only read my content on Facebook (yes, it’s true; one of Bredemarket’s long-term champions primarily engages with me on Facebook), some only on Instagram, and so forth.
What would happen if I decided to can most of my social channels and only post TikTok videos? I’d lose a lot of engagement and business.
Even if I concentrated on LinkedIn only, which seems like a logical tactic for a B2B service provider, I would lose out. Do you know how many people on Threads NEVER read LinkedIn? I don’t want to lose those people.
So that’s where I ended up. And if you know my system, the question after the “why” question is the “how” question…
How can you post on multiple social channels?
Repurposing…intelligently.
You don’t have to create completely unique content for every platform. You can adapt content for each platform, when it makes sense.
So now I’m going to eat my own wildebeest food and see where I can repurpose this text, which was originally a LinkedIn article. Yes, even on TikTok. I may not come up with a whopping 31 pieces of content like I did in a 2023 test, but I can certainly get this message out to people who hate LinkedIn. Perhaps maybe even to my mailing list, for people who have subscribed to the Bredemarket mailing list.
I haven’t figured out what I’ll do in this particular instance, but here are some general guidelines on content repurposing:
You can just copy and paste the entire piece of content on another platform. For example, I took all this text and copied it from the original LinkedIn article. But I hope I remembered to edit all the phrases that assume this content is posted on LinkedIn. And I’d have to consider something else…
You can just copy and paste the entire piece of content on another platform and remove the links. To be honest, no social media platform likes outbound links, but some platforms such as Instagram REALLY don’t like outbound links. So before you do this, ask if the content still makes sense if the links aren’t present.
You can provide a summary of the content and link back to the original content for more detail. Isolate the important points in the content, just publish those isolated points, and then link back to the original content if the reader wants more detail. Bear in mind that they probably won’t, because clicking on a link is one extra step that most people won’t want to do.
You can provide a really short summary of the content and link back to the original content for more detail. Bluesky and other Twitter wannabe platforms have character limitations, so often you have to really abridge the content to fit it in the platform. I’ve often written a “really short” version of my content for resharing, then discovered that even that version is too long for Bluesky.
You can address the content topic in an entirely different medium. Because of my preferences, I usually start with text and then develop an image and/or a video and/or audio that addresses the topic. But trust me—if I convert this blog post (yes, I rewrote the preceding three words when I copied this from the original LinkedIn article) into video or audio format, it will NOT include all the words you are reading here. Unless I’m feeling particularly cranky.
Oh, and if you’re using pictures with your content, don’t forget to adjust the pictures as needed. A 1920×1080 LinkedIn article image will NOT work on Instagram.
So there you have it. Posting on multiple social channels helps you reach people you may not otherwise reach, as long as you don’t spread yourself too thin or get discouraged. And you can repurpose content to fit within the expectations of each of these social channels, allowing you to re-use your content multiple times.
If you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do. (Plus the usual Bredemarket services: I onboarded a new client yesterday and hope to onboard another one this week.)
First, create the correct messaging, both internal and external. If Sales has no material, they’re going to say whatever they want.
Second, get executive buy in on the messaging. And make sure they’ve bought in. One of my projects was doomed when I received no response, then kinda sorta got an OK, then later got a “why are we doing this?”
Third, communicate the messaging. That’s why you need the internal part.
Bredemarket 