Social media seems to be the answer to everything these days – whether you’re trying to build up your business, recruit staff or reconnect with people from your past. I use it to stalk my children, stay in touch with people who aren’t just around the corner, promote my business, build relationships with interesting people and much more.
Social posts come in many flavours – do any of these ring a bell with you?
‘Let me share my life’
This poster shares every detail from a picture of the coffee they’ve just bought to their latest purchase on ebay. You get to know their partner and all their idiosyncrasies, their kids achievements and lots of cute (and not so cute) pictures of them in action, their pets, their hobbies – nothing is overlooked.
‘I want to inspire you’
This is the serial quotation poster. They love a good quote and they seem to have an endless stream of words of wisdom from both well-known names and total unknowns. Some of them are great, but the daily deluge of good thoughts can be a tiny bit overwhelming.
‘I love cats’
… or dogs or dancing or music or [enter your current passion here]. Like one of these posts and you’ll find you’re getting lots more similar posts appearing in your feed – and, while I have time for the occasional cat video, it’s all too easy to find they’ve sucked an hour out of my day.
‘I’m going to persuade you …’
This is the poster on a mission to get you involved in their latest campaign – whether it’s to banish plastic from the world or save a child in Africa. I’m a big believer in charity, taking action to improve our planet and helping others generally, but I hate being told I ‘have to’ do something. My rebel comes out in force!
‘I’m only here to promote my business’
This person has been told that social media is a great marketing tool (and it is), but they don’t engage with people unless they’re showing signs of parting with some money. They post loads of sales messages, but don’t actually talk to their ‘community’.
‘Isn’t this a numbers game?’
The aim of this person’s game is to make as many connections as possible and then tell people how many ‘friends’, ‘contacts’ or ‘followers’ they have. They don’t read their home feeds, answer messages or have conversations.
Of course, you know some of these people – but you don’t fit into any of these categories do you?!
