When we think about Thanksgiving, what thoughts are the ones that immediately come to mind? Is it the big dinner, the eating ALL day, the football games, seeing family you might not have seen for a while, planning for your Black Friday shopping trip, or just another day off from work? While it can be all of these, let me offer up a different “serving” of something to consider…
One thing I know for certain is regardless of which item(s) you picked from the list above, stories will be told. Stories about what went on last week, last month, during the year, and even beyond. They will be told by young and old, single and married. Stories upon stories about everything imaginable. This is what makes us “social” and what people want to hear.
When you get up tomorrow and think about your involvement in social media, is it about the stories you heard yesterday at the dinner table or is it about “broadcasting” something about yourself or your company…again? I would challenge you to think about what people “enjoy” hearing about and will take time to listen and read. They want your stories, not your “commercials”. They want to learn and be entertained and be better off for reading what you just wrote rather than feeling they wasted their time.
Think about Thanksgiving every day of the year and what happened during that day…stories. People telling others interesting, thoughtful, helpful, insightful, compelling stories that you were attentive to and enthralled by as you listened. This is what gets “shared” and “talked about”…this is what gets spread via “word-of-mouth”. This is the gold behind what makes social media so powerful and so engaging…the stories that people normally don’t get to hear unless they were at your house for Thanksgiving (or anywhere else where you might be telling these stories).
When people ask me why their content, regardless of social channel, isn’t shared – the answer is usually pretty easy. Because what you wrote about wasn’t like the Thanksgiving story, it was another “commercial” about you. This doesn’t get shared…Thanksgiving dinner stories do.
