Tag Archives: social media

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. 

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/

Royals

Here’s a song.

The listed artist for this song is Royalty Free Music Background.

The song title is “Future Electronic (Upbeat Music).”

I had been using an AI music generator in Canva, but since that is now restricted to non-commercial use I switched to another music app within Canva for Bredemarket’s videos.

Taking great care to select videos that are royalty free.

Since I liked this particular song, I used it in two videos, the first of which was only 8 seconds long, the second 64 seconds long.

And then I merrily uploaded both videos to the Bredemarket blog, LinkedIn, various Meta properties, and Bluesky with no problem.

Until I got to YouTube.

The 8 second video uploaded fine, but the 64 second version was blocked worldwide because of a copyright violation.

On a band called Royalty Free Music Background.

Social media is fun.

Friction Is Bad

(NOT part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

Friction is bad.

I know some people think that friction is good, because if you tolerate the friction to get to the thing, then you must really want it.

But more often than not, friction is bad.

Which is why when I create a reel, I try to post the native reel in all places where appropriate.

Take my most recent 8 second “biometric product marketing expert” reel.

But you don’t have to leave this blog post to see the original reel.

See how easy a frictionless experience can be?

More here.

Biometric Product Marketing Expert.

Bredemarket’s Five Secrets to Hosting a Successful LinkedIn Audio Event

Bredemarket, the curious wildebeest, wanted to learn more about LinkedIn Audio Events. So I hosted my own. Based upon my now-extensive experience in this medium, I can share my five secrets to hosting a successful LinkedIn Audio Event.

Don’t start early

Um…I failed to do this. The event was supposed to start at 8:00 am Pacific Daylight Time, and I started at 7:58.

Meticulously plan

I didn’t do this either. I scheduled the event at 7:41, 19 minutes before it was supposed to start, and only 17 minutes before it actually started.

Use the best audio equipment for stellar sound

Um…this was on my phone, with no headset.

Host from a quiet place with no distractions

I definitely failed here. I started the event outside the (former) Yangtze Reataurant on very busy Euclid Avenue in Ontario, California. If anyone had joined the last-minute event, they would have heard all sorts of traffic noises.

Have a purpose for the event

This is the only thing I did right. My purpose? To learn the mechanics behind LinkedIn Audio Events. I didn’t learn everything—since I was the only attendee, I couldn’t channel my inner Anna Morgan and invite another speaker to the stage. But I figured out some of the mechanics.

Lessons learned

(Personal preference: I don’t refer to this as a “post mortem.” No one died.)

In addition to the lessons implied above (plan, ensure a superior audio experience, etc.), I learned that you will never get to listen to this morning’s event. LinkedIn doesn’t post recordings of the event after the fact. So I can lie and say that I shared the most scintillating details, even though I didn’t.

But I achieved my purpose, and maybe I will host a real audio event some day.

I did some more experimentation this morning, but my other experiments were live video tests on Facebook, on the Bredemarket page (not the groups; another lesson learned).

Are My 15 Second Videos Too Long?

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve created a lot of Bredemarket videos lately.

But…

Even Bredemarket’s “short” 15 second videos may be TWICE AS LONG as they should be.

The Microsoft 8 second study

In 2015, Time magazine reported on the results of a Microsoft study:

Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 participants and studied the brain activity of 112 others using electroencephalograms (EEGs). Microsoft found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.

As many noted, a goldfish’s attention span is 9 seconds.

Celestial eye goldfish image public domain.

Some argue that the 8 second attention span is not universal and varies according to the task. For example, a 21 minute attention span has been recorded for drivers. If drivers had an 8 second attention span, we would probably all be dead by now.

But watching a video is not a life-or-death situation. Viewers will happily jump away if there’s no reason to watch.

So I have my challenge.

Ironically, I learned about the 8 second rule while watching a LinkedIn Learning course about the 3 minute rule. I haven’t finished the course yet, so I haven’t yet learned how to string someone along for 22.5 8-second segments.