Are You Using Social Media for What it's Meant for?

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Everybody, this is Neal Schaffer, welcome to a another episode of maximize your social hope you're enjoying the week, wherever you are in the world. It's another crazy week in the world of social media. You know, recently I posted on Facebook, and if you know me, I don't necessarily post the same things on all of my social networks, I'm always striving to use the social networks, what they were sort of originally intended to be for, which is going to be the topic of this podcast, and how I think it's going to help you be more effective at Social Media Marketing. But sometimes I just sort of go on a limb, and I'm not into sort of throwing out opinionated things. And you know, making people feel uncomfortable I, you know, that's just not me, that's not my brand. There are some people out there that are like agitators, that sort of their social media brand. They want to, you know, criticize others when they feel that things aren't, what they should be and what have you. And I usually don't do that. But I think it was last week on Facebook one day, I basically posted and, you know, I use every network a little bit differently. Instagram has definitely become one of my favorite networks, because it was made for the mobile phone, it's obviously optimized for the mobile phone. And therefore when I'm on the go, it is one of the most enjoyable networks for me not only to post my photos on which I enjoy doing, and you should follow me on Instagram if you haven't been to. So you can keep tabs of where I am in the world when I travel. Obviously, my Instagram account is instagram.com/neal Schaffer. But more importantly, when I'm on Instagram, Instagram was made for a smartphone, right. And I'm just puzzled by more and more people that are starting to post memes. They're posting advertisements, they're posting photos that they themselves did not take. They're posting quotes, it's sort of starting to get out of hand. Now, you know, as I always say, in and I wrote it and maximize your social first. But, you know, the social networks are always changing, because in essence, we as users are hijacking them and using them for things they were never intended for. And I get that. And obviously, all of these networks have been that way, in one way or another. But there's also a growing revolt coming that I see of people that just aren't happy of other people wanting to use, sometimes use some of these networks just to maintain mindshare, just because they feel they need to publish something on a daily basis, just because they think it will be engaging, quote, unquote, so I, you know, felt this and I went out on a limb on Facebook and said, hey, you know, I just want wanted to let people know that I was starting to unfollow people, these are people that I maybe LinkedIn connections with, or maybe Facebook friends with. But on Instagram, if I see whether we're friends elsewhere or not, if I see people just posting visual memes, and quotes, in advertisements, it's just unnatural. You know, Instagram was a place where take a picture on your phone, right, and you upload it. And it allows people to see the real you even businesses are using Instagram in many, many different ways. A lot of them are curating content from other people taking pictures of their brand. This is something that a big brands like Disneyland or Ritz Carlton have done, others are, you know, showing behind the scenes looks at the team working the employees, what have you, there's a lot of different I believe authentic ways in which businesses can use it as well. And there may be some people that use it to show visual memes and quotes and, you know, they may get their share of quote, unquote, engagement. And they may, you know, be reaching whatever objectives they have a doing so but I tell you, when I posted this on Facebook, and you can follow me, anyone can follow me on Facebook, I'm open in that aspect. You can just see the comments of a number of people who said thank you. And you have always thought that way. Why do so many people do it? You know, Instagram is a beautiful, authentic network that's been ruined by others and what have you. And it's not just Instagram, actually, it's a lot of different networks. It's, you know, one day when Facebook was saying or Facebook never said, but when Facebook organic reach was given to those posted photos, you had people that just posted photos day in and day out. You still see this in Google Plus, you've seen it on Pinterest, you see it on Instagram, and these aren't necessarily pictures that these people took. They just seem like random pictures just or random animated pictures I see a lot in Google Plus, that I just think contribute to the noise and really don't offer any value other than that person posting them wanting to maintain mindshare or wanting to keep a minimal editorial calendar of x posts per day. So hey, you know, I've been there before and I've done the same thing in the past. I want to be very upfront and honest with you, as well, but I'm have tried to stop doing as much of that as possible. And in fact, I'm not going back into the history of my photos as I organize them. And just, you know, I'm posting photos of when I was, you know, in Japan, or when I lived in China or in Indonesia, you know, 2025 years ago. And you know what, I'm not uploading them to Instagram. It's not right, right, uploading them to Facebook, uploading them, Google Plus, I have a Japan board on Pinterest, where I like to share things Japan, Pinterest does give you the ability to upload an image from your computer to share and, and I think it creates a great visual memory on my Japan board. But Instagram is about taking a picture in here now. Right? I didn't take that picture from my smartphone. And I didn't take it recently, it just seems weird to post it on a real time smartphone, photo network like Instagram, you can't even take a picture and upload it from the web version of Instagram, from your computer. I mean, it is made for the mobile phones. So the people that are posting these things, they could be using an Instagram posting tool on their computer where they're uploading photos. But it's it's just not normal, right. And when we talk about social media, if you heard me on Brian Kramer's pm substance or peer matter substance webinar reasonably, and I'm going to do this again, because it was my you know, Brian is the author of a book called H two h or human to human. And he's coming out with another book in the near future. And I talked about and you know, Brian, I just, I love the term. So I did a webinar that showcased the H two h of your social media strategy, and the HDHP, human to human. At the end of the day, it's humans that are using social media, it's humans, within businesses that are trying to reach out to other humans, whether they be decision makers in business for b2b, or whether they be consumers. And we're seeing the evolution of companies that are just trying to be more human in their social media marketing, and those that are being a lot more effective. So when I talk about this, don't take it as a personal rant, although some of you may be nodding your head and a green. But I just think you're going to be more successful at your social media marketing, by using these networks for what they were originally intended. Now, Facebook is a little bit different, because it's all over the place. And in terms of humanizing your brand, sharing a photo, like others may do on Facebook, it may be an effective way of doing it. And if you go to my maximize social business Facebook page, you'll see that I do it. And you know what, there's some quotes that aren't effective. There's some pictures that are effective. And I try to analyze and optimize according to, you know, the Deming, circle PDCA, right. But I just think that, you know, Instagram or some of these other places, it's really important to understand who is using them, why they're using them what they were intended for. And I believe those that stick according to the original intentions of those networks, for instance, Pinterest, obviously, is about creating visual boards of things you want to remember, for whatever reason, but if you're just posting the same picture on 10 different days to Google Plus, and then pinning, from Google plus, so that you attract more, you know, SEO juice from Pinterest, to Google Plus. And when someone goes to your board, they're seeing the same image 10 times, that, obviously, is not the way that Pinterest was intended to be used, right? So I hope that none of you are doing any of these, maybe you are, maybe you just didn't realize, you know, if you go to that Facebook comment thread, one of my friends from San Francisco said, You know what, I work in a creative studio, we've actually been posting examples of our art, or our work onto our Instagram channel. And you know, we never thought anything about it. And, you know, my answer was, hey, if it's working, great, no need to change anything. If you feel confident and comfortable doing what you're doing, then that's great. And maybe that's a special use case scenario, right? But anyway, I just wanted to throw this out there. And, you know, like I said, if I had thrown it out on Facebook, and nobody had said anything, I probably wouldn't have recorded this podcast. But because I got pretty overwhelming support by a lot of different people that some of them are true social media influencers in themselves, I feel a little bit more confident that there's a lot more people that think this way. And therefore you may want to rethink what you are posting on some of these, especially visual social networks. So that's my advice for today. As always, I try to you know, talk from the heart based on things that happened real recent, but if there's something you want me to talk about, feel free to ping me I'd love to covered here on this podcast. And that's it for today, everybody. I hope wherever you are in the world, you make it a social Day. Bye Bye for now. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions, ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com make it a social day.