Was talking to an old friend of mine yesterday, he said to me: “You know what pisses me off?” he continued “these people that post company rubbish on LinkedIn, their colleagues like it, nobody else likes it, in fact we all ignore it and then it disappears”. He likened it to people in a meeting, and them all slapping the person who wrote the content on the back. And of course, none of us care, in fact nobody cares, you don’t care, I don’t care, only the people who work for that company, cares.I said to him “I bet people get no response from this, they are wasting their time and their money?”He agreed.Here’s a Great ExampleI’ve just seen a marketing manager I’m connected to post on LinkedIn with the following comment
“When does speed of change becomes a competitive advantage? Come to <name of their conference> in Las Vegas this week to find out!
Now we all know this is is meaningless. It’s a product pitch that nobody is interested in, to an event which will be just a product pitch, that nobody is interested in.In other words it’s just noise.It comes across as any advert and sounds just like everybody else, “we are the greatest, we are number one, buy our product and we can cure all known diseases.” I don’t believe you and neither does anybody else. It just becomes noise.One guy who works for me told me that he used to follow a sales team on social at his last company. He says that now all they post is “corporate crap” so he has unfollowed them all. As he said to me “why would I subscribe to get information 20 times, I now follow the company and get it once”.Related:
Why Your Perfect Blue Sheet Isn’t Worth JackSo here’s my request.Stop spamming social with this content please.If as a sales person or a marketer and you are being asked to share corporate content, please stop. You do realise that people are laughing at you, when you post this? They are laughing as everybody know this is crap, you know it, your marketing department and so do the people that will flick past it on social, every day.I’m really sorry, but when we see you post this rubbish, we think how sad you look, how last century you look and feel sad that you work for a company that thinks this is actually good practice.So, I ask that you stop,
social is about being authentic, let’s see the real you! Be insightful and be educational.Now some of you may be thinking, I have post this content because I’m told to. Well, tell the people that have told you to share this that I’ve asked you to stop. If they argue then please direct them to me, I’m happy to talk to them and back you up.I don’t care who ever and where ever this corporate content comes from, employee advance tool or your Sales and Marketing VP. Please tell them to stop asking you to do this. After all, your social profiles are yours, not the companies.And I repeat my offer to you. If they don’t like it, tell them “Tim Hughes says I should share it” and send them my details.
