At the end of last year, I talked with several marketers about social media. You know what I discovered? They don’t get content balance.

They all use the same content formula for their clients.

1/4 content about the client
3/4 “value added information”

Okay, what they get right is that it’s not all about the client. Kudos to that.

But they completely missed the “social” aspect of social media. All the content is pushed.

Don’t get me wrong. Linking to industry-relevant articles is a good idea. The best social media accounts do it. But conversation and “retweeting” is also important. Let’s face it, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and The Washington Post aren’t hurting for name recognition and web traffic. Linking directly to their posts are good for disseminating information but not so good for promoting someone’s followers.

Instead of linking to a Mashable article, look to see if one of your followers has linked to the same article. Then RT it. Mashable still gets exposure. Your followers get good information. And the follower you RTed gets some exposure. Everyone wins, and your follower feels special.

The marketers also forgot about conversation. Remember, it’s “social” media. We’re more likely to follow people who will chat with us.

Does this take more time? Yes, it does. But you know what? When I RT and chat with folks, my @Mention stream is a lot bigger than when I just post about me and link to articles.

Buzz is what it’s about. Do what creates the buzz. Marketers should get that, right?

Tags: communication, marketing, Relationship building, social media

This entry was posted on Friday, January 7th, 2011 at 8:07 am and is filed under social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.