social media – Page 2

Bridging the Content Gap: Increasing Your Content Quantity and Recency

(All pictures Imagen 4)

Tech marketers, do you have a “content gap” that you don’t even know about? (But your prospects know about it.)

When I approach a Bredemarket content prospect, I like to check the prospect’s current online content first.

Not a full-fledged analysis like the one I perform for my web/social media checkup. Which, if you didn’t notice, is numbered “Bredemarket 404.”
But just enough to see what content you’re generating, or not (quantity). And when you last posted content (recency).

You don’t need me to analyze the quantity and recency of your company’s online content. You can analyze it yourself.

And you SHOULD survey it.

Because whether you look at your content or avert your eyes, your prospects are looking at your content or lack thereof.

If your company doesn’t display online content, your competitor does.

Do you dare take a look at yourself and answer the following questions?

Date of most recent blog post
Date of most recent case study
Date of most recent video
Date of most recent white paper
Date of most recent Facebook company post
Date of most recent Instagram company post, reel, or story
Date of most recent LinkedIn company post or article
And all the other social media outlets you’ve opened over the years (yes, even the Snapchat the intern created in 2019)

Now I will be honest. While I am in some ways a content freak, even I fall behind at times.

Bredemarket’s most recent white paper dates from October 2023.
Bredemarket’s most recent case study (actually case studies) dates from April 2023, over two years ago as I write this.

Physician, heal thyself.

But what is the status of YOUR content? Quantity? Recency?

And what are you going to do about it?

Click here to bridge your content gap.

Or don’t.

What are you going to do?

Oh, Joel (Texas Porn and Georgia Social Media)

A wombat in lingerie, or a racy wombat. Not a RACI wombat, the topic of the blog post.

The definitive summary on U.S. age assurance for adult content and social media as of today (June 27, 2025) has already been written at Biometric Update.

And I confess that if I were Joel R. McConvey, I would have unable to resist the overpowering temptation to dip my pen in the inkwell and write the following sentence:

“But as age checks become law in more and more places, the industry will have to weigh how far it can push – or pull out.”

But McConvey’s article does not just cover the Supreme Court’s decision on Texas HB 1181’s age verification requirement for porn websites—and Justice Clarence Thomas’ statement in the majority opinion that the act “triggers, and survives, review under intermediate scrutiny because it only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.”

What about social media?

The Biometric Update article also notes that a separate case regarding age assurance for social media use is still winding its way through the courts. The article quotes U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg’s ruling on Georgia SB 351:

“[T]he act curbs the speech rights of Georgia’s youth while imposing an immense, potentially intrusive burden on all Georgians who wish to engage in the most central computerized public fora of the twenty-first century. This cannot comport with the free flow of information the First Amendment protects.”

One important distinction: while opposition to pornography is primarily (albeit not exclusively) from the right of the U.S. political spectrum, opposition to social media is more broad-based. So social media restrictions are less of a party issue.

But returning to law rather than politics, one can objectively (or most likely subjectively) debate the Constitutional merits of naked people having sex vs. AI fakes of reunions of the living members of Led Zeppelin, the latter of which seem to be the trend on Facebook these days.

Minority Report

But streaking back to Texas, what of the minority opinion of the three Supreme Court Justices who dissented in the 6-3 opinion? According to The Texas Tribune, Justice Elena Kagan spoke for Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Kentanji Brown Jackson:

“But what if Texas could do better — what if Texas could achieve its interest without so interfering with adults’ constitutionally protected rights in viewing the speech HB 1181 covers? The State should be foreclosed from restricting adults’ access to protected speech if that is not in fact necessary.”

If you assume age verification (which uses a government backed ID) rather than age estimation (which does not), the question of whether identity verification (even without document retention) is “restricting” is a muddy one.

Of course all these issues have little to do with the technology itself, reminding us that technology is only a small part of any solution.

Are All Your Eggs in One Social Basket?

(Imagen 4)

If your strategy is solely based upon a single platform such as TikTok, CapCut, Substack, Canva, or any other, you’ve already lost by putting all your eggs in one social basket.

Social dependence

My Saturday TikTok post got me thinking about companies whose entire STRATEGY is based on TikTok.

Not tactics.

Strategy.

Even though the chance remains that TikTok may be banned in the United States, as it is already banned in India…and is not available in China.
Or the companies that depend on CapCut who may have just surrendered their intellectual rights. Oh, and CapCut may be banned in the United States also.
Or the people that are so thrilled with Substack that they are stopping all other social media activity and concentrating solely on Substack.
Or the companies (I know of one) who base their strategy solely on Canva.

Or you can cite any other platform, dependence upon which could devastate your business overnight.

So own your own website and mailing list…right?

Well, at least Bredemarket doesn’t have to worry about losing access to my prospects and customers.

Even if I lose access to every single social media service, I still have my WordPress website and my MailChimp mailing list.

So I am 100% insulated, right?

Um, right?

OK, guess I’m threatened also.

Omnichannel distribution

In the biometric world, we talk about five factors of authentication and identity verification. If you depend upon a single factor, you’re in trouble. But using multiple factors lessens the risk.

Similarly, if you distribute your content via multiple channels, then a threat to any single channel doesn’t put you out of business.

(Sales pitch incoming)

And your distributed content can take multiple forms. Blogs. Case studies. White papers. Social content on multiple channels.

Assuming you actually create the content.

Or get someone to help you create it.

(Told you there would be a sales pitch.)

So rather than reading Bredemarket’s sales pitch (call to action), why don’t we work on creating yours? Click the image below and reserve a free meeting time.

CPA

Bredemarket’s “CPA.”

Why Generic Pablum is Critical for Your Company—Critically Bad

(Imagen 4)

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and therefore endure the regular assault from the so-called LinkedIn “experts.”

You know them.

The people who get all bent out of shape over this character—because it’s certain proof that you use “ChatGPT” (because there is no other generative AI tool) because no human ever uses em dashes.
And then in the next breath the LinkedIn “experts” slam people who don’t use “ChatGPT” to increase productivity. For example, jobseekers should use “ChatGPT” to “beat the ATS,” automatically fine-tune their resumes for every individual application, and apply to thousands of positions.
Oh, but the LinkedIn “experts” say you shouldn’t spray and pray. Tap into the hidden job market via our members-only gated website.

But that’s not the worst thing they say.

Formulate Safe Generic Pablum

When they’re not commanding you to avoid the em dash, the LinkedIn “experts” remind us that LinkedIn is a professional network. And that our communications must be professional.

No cat pictures.
No “life sucks” posts.
Nothing that would cause anyone any offense.

The ideal personal communication is this: “I am thrilled and excited to announce my CJIS certification!”

The ideal business communication is this:

Yes, the “experts” wish that businesses said nothing at all. But if they do say something, a statement like this optimizes outcomes: “WidgetCorp is dedicated to bettering the technology ecosystem.”

Such a statement is especially effective if all your competitors are saying the same thing. This unity of messaging positions you as an industry leader.

Which enables you to…argh, I can’t do this any more. I am hating myself more and more with each word I type. Can I throw up now? This is emotionally painful.

Derek Hughes just sent me an email that describes this generic pablum. It read, in part:

“Everything reads like it was written by a robot on decaf.

“Same recycled tips. Same recycled tone. Somehow, it’s all… grey.”

Obliterate Safe Generic Pablum

If your company wants conversions—and I assume that you do—avoid the generic pablum and say something.

This will bring your hungry people (target audience) to you.

And for the prospects that despise humanness and glory in generic pablum…if their focus is elsewhere, your focus won’t impede. Let them roam in the distance.

In the distance.

Did I Subconsciously Inject Emotion in My “Impede” Reel?

Remember my “In the Distance” Bredemarket blog post from Saturday?

I embedded a reel in that post with the following text:

If their focus is elsewhere

My focus won’t impede

Since I had created the reel anyway, I repurposed it by sharing it on Bredemarket’s social media channels.

Including YouTube. You can see the YouTube short here:

Now when I shared it on YouTube, I did so with no context whatsoever. The caption simply read “In the Distance.” Without the words I wrote in the original blog post (I’ll get to two particular words later).

Yet by Monday morning the short had over 1,000 views. For Bredemarket’s YouTube channel, that’s a lot. Only three shorts have attained higher views: two about Tropical Storm Hilary, and one about squirrels.

But why?

Why?

The relative popularity of this short on YouTube is a mystery. Other than its brevity, it includes none of the elements of a successful video:

It does not use trending audio.
It does not use trending key words or hashtags.
Its message is obscure, if not downright cryptic.
Its visuals do not appeal to a mass audience.

Perhaps…

I have a theory that probably isn’t correct, but I’m going to entertain it anyway.

If this didn’t immediately occur to you, the reel subconsciously incorporates emotion. Emotion at the loss of my “former friends” as mentioned in the blog (but not on YouTube). Yes, some of the same former friends who forgot my birthday long ago.

Needy people, hungry people, it’s all the same. Picture from https://bredemarket.com/2024/01/02/pizza-stories-the-worst-time-to-read-a-pizza-post-on-social-media/.

So my wild theory is that the sense of loss, resignation, and renewed determination (I won’t impede on them) permeated the reel and subconsciously increased interest.

Or maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps there are just more wombat fans than I realized.

Regardless of the unexpected popularity of this YouTube short, it illustrates why emotions are now the seventh of the seven questions that a content creator should ask you.

I (always) need to improve my INTENTIONAL injection of emotions into my content.

And yours.

Expanding My Generative AI Picture Prompts

I’m experimenting with more detailed prompts for generative AI.

If you haven’t noticed, I use a ton of AI-generated images in Bredemarket blog posts and social media posts. They primarily feature wildebeests, wombats, and iguanas, although sometimes they feature other things.

My prompts for these images are usually fairly short, no more than two sentences.

But when I saw some examples of prompts written by Danie Wylie—yes, the same Danie Wylie who wrote the Facebook post earlier this year at the https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0nvmhyuLpn3jwMv8K8sbK5EXfS4kcpjfWHicgj4BJhdFLMme87P5fvPSYf9CwjRH7l&id=100001380243595&mibextid=wwXIfr URL—then I realized that I could include a lot more detail in my own image prompts.

If you read Wylie’s Facebook post, or my own subsequent post at the https://bredemarket.com/2025/06/03/when-hivellm-pitches-an-anti-fraud-professional/ URL, then you know exactly what the picture depicts.

Plus some other stuff buried in the details.

By the way, here is my prompt, which Google Gemini (Imagen 4) stored as “Eerie Scene: Sara’s Fake Bills.”

“Draw a realistic picture of a ghost-like woman wearing a t-shirt with the name “Sara.” She is holding out a large stack of dollar bills that is obviously fake because the picture on the bill is a picture of a clown with orange face makeup wearing a blue suit and a red tie. Next to Sara is a dead tree with a beehive hanging from it. Bees buzz around the beehive. A laptop with the word “HiveLLM” on the screen sits on the rocky ground beneath the tree. It is night time, and the full moon casts an eerie glow over the landscape.”

I didn’t get exactly what I wanted—the bills are two-faced—but close enough. And the accident of two-faced bills is a GOOD thing.

How detailed are your picture prompts?

Eerie.

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.

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.

As an example, this Bredemarket Instagram reel about the San Antonio Avenue bridge between Ontario and Upland, California has been viewed over 6,800 times, when most of my reels only feature double digit views. Why? I have no idea.
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.
And both are dwarfed by my Private Equity Talent Hunt LinkedIn post and its 24,000+ impressions.

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/