If you’re on a platform such as Facebook, you sometimes receive advertisements that are VERY specific. Such as, “This is the perfect drink holder for California white males over the age of 50!” It’s almost as if they know everything about you…because they do.
Unless you implement privacy restrictions and don’t allow platform advertisers to reference your personal information.
Of course, if the advertiser isn’t able to narrowcast directly to you, the advertiser will broadcast to everybody.
And Facebook will start showing you advertisements in Chinese.
Qiaobi.
And if you complain to Facebook and ask why you’re seeing Chinese ads, Facebook will simply reply, “We are prohibited from using your personal information. Since there are a billion Chinese, we take a guess that you’re Chinese and show you those ads.”
Which brings us to age and social media.
The Under 16s Are Blocklisted
Back when Marky Mark created The Facebook, he initially targeted college-age users. But as time went on, Facebook and its competitors started aiming for younger ages.
This makes sense. Advertisers want to target consumers who are suspectible to changing their minds and are not set in their ways. So while a super kewl soft drink manufacturer isn’t going to target me, it is going to target 18 year olds…and 16 year olds…and 14 year olds…and 12 year olds.
A recent DKC report stated that 42% of all household spending is influenced by 8- to 14-year-olds, and that this age group is DIRECTLY spending over $100 billion per year.
So you can bet that advertisers are clamoring to purchase ad time on Facebook, TikTok, and the other social media services to get a pipeline to the brains of these 8 to 14 year olds…whoops, 12 to 14 year olds, since most social media services require you to be at least 12 years old to have an account.
But what if access to that entire age group is cut off entirely?
We’re seeing all over the world that jurisdictions are enacting or trying to enact bans on the use of social media for people under 16 years of age. The latest country to propose such a move is Indonesia:
“Authorities in the country, which is Southeast Asia’s largest economy, said Friday they expect social media platforms to deactivate the accounts of under-16s from March 28, starting with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox.”
In other words, all the popular sites that teens love.
And in certain jurisdictions, the companies will implement age verification and age estimation technology to ensure that kids don’t like about their ages to get in.
Assuming these prohibitions stand, this causes a huge problem for B2C marketers that target teens: how do you market to them when the direct pipelines to this age group are cut off?
I’m just thankful that Bredemarket and its clients sell to adults. You don’t really see 13 year olds buying biometric technology.
I’ve previously commented that the precinct workers in voter ID states have neither the knowledge nor the equipment to tell a fake voter ID from a real one.
But what if you rely on things other than voter ID to determine identity?
“My vote didn’t count against prop 50 because my signature didn’t match ? I voted in person !! With ID that no one asked for !! Make it make sense !! I’m sure I’m not the only vote they didn’t count !!”
So my state of California, which does not require voter ID, uses signature verification. If you view cherielynn69’s original thread, you will see a letter from the Butte County Clerk-Recorder stating “signature does not match.”
I’d like to know who made that determination, and what training they had.
As it turns out, I have never discussed signatures as a biometric in detail. But the Biometrics Institute has, distinguishing between static and dynamic signatures. You obtain more information with the latter:
“The physical actions involved in writing a signature are captured, usually on a screen sensitive device like a tablet, and recorded electronically. Consequently different characteristics are used rather than just those found in the image of the signature. This involves a three dimensional (X, Y & Z axes) evaluation of the time taken, rhythm and varying velocities of forming each letter and the overall signature, pen/stylus pressure and the direction of the strokes, including free strokes, for example crossing a ‘T’ or dotting an ‘I’.”
Which is nice…except that when comparing the signature on a mail-in ballot to the signature on a voter roll, only static signature comparison is available.
And static signatures are not all that accurate.
In 1971, publisher McGraw-Hill scored the rights to Howard Hughes’ life story, accompanied by a letter from Howard Hughes affirming that he had authorized writer Clifford Irving to act on Hughes’ behalf. Experts from McGraw-Hill examined the letter and concluded that Hughes could have written it…until those troublesome postal inspectors noticed something. While the writing in the Hughes letter differed from Irving’s own writing, the two shared telltale similarities.
Because while it’s hard to change your face, and very hard to change your finger, it’s much easier to change your signature. But not easy enough, as the postal inspectors showed.
So I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t rely on signatures as proof of identity.
Inspired by the Constant Contact session I attended at the Small Business Expo, I wanted to conceptualize the Bredemarket online presence, and decided to adopt a “planet with rings” model.
Think of Bredemarket as a planet. Like Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter, the planet Bredemarket is surrounded by rings.
A variety of social platforms, including Bluesky, Instagram, Substack, and Threads.
Additional social platforms, including TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube.
While this conceptualization is really only useful to me, I thought a few of you may be interested in some of the “inner rings.”
And if you’re wondering why your favorite way cool platform is banished to the outer edges…well, that’s because it doesn’t make Bredemarket any money. I’ve got a business to run here, and TikTok doesn’t help me pay the bills…
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.)
My interests are admittedly niche (I created a YouTube video about it that most people won’t watch), but I’m still devoted to feeding the few who are also interested in this niche.
So if you’re interested in identity and technology content, ensure you’re following the Bredemarket blog and current social channels. They’ve changed since my original list and the May 2024 contraction, but…
in addition to the Bredemarket website, you can currently search for Bredemarket on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, the aforementioned YouTube, a well-known site that may or may not disappear in the next three weeks, and other places.
I’m seeking a Senior Product Marketing Manager role in software (biometrics, government IDs, geolocation, identity and access management, cybersecurity, health) as an individual contributor on a collaborative team.
Key Accomplishments
Product launches (Confidential software product, Know Your Business offering, Morpho Video Investigator, MorphoBIS Cloud, Printrak BIS, Omnitrak).
Multiple enablement, competitive analysis, and strategy efforts.
Exploration of growth markets.
Multiple technologies.
Multiple industries.
Over 22 types of content.
Currently available for full-time employment or consulting work (Bredemarket).
The third image in the “houseboat” series of posts that I’ve run on SOME social media outlets.
Beginning May 2, Bredemarket is on fewer social channels. The information in this post is not new.
If you were reading some of Bredemarket’s social channels, you may have seen a similar announcement on May 15, but that announcement listed the services where I was no longer posting.
If you were reading some of Bredemarket’s OTHER social channels, you may NOT have seen that announcement. Because those other social channels were the precise ones where I was no longer posting.
The May 15 social media account is a follow-up to a prior announcement from May 2, which said in part that I was “pausing activity on some Bredemarket social channels (and some related personal channels) that have no subscribers, exhibit no interest, or yield no responses.”
The second image in the “houseboat” series of posts that I’ve run on SOME social media outlets.
But rather than dwelling on the negative aspects of the social channels where Bredemarket has suspended activity, I’m going to concentrate on the social channels where Bredemarket is still active.
Bredemarket 