You know social media? SOCIAL media? Have you heard of it? Maybe I’m not saying it loud enough…
SOCIAL MEDIA!!!!!
Well there’s a little clue in that name. It starts with S and ends with L.
And yet so many people seem to be forgetting what it’s all about. Being social. Interacting, engaging and generating interesting content.
I’m sure you’ve seen the people who tweet every hour, including throughout the night. It usually sounds like the start of an article with a link at the end. This is known as the autofeed. Auto as in you don’t even need to be on there, it will automatically tweet for you. And it will take this content from the web, sometimes randomly or, if you select, from a specific site.
There are several problems with this.
1. You haven’t read the content you are posting and you may not even agree with it
2. When someone responds to your post, having read the article, you’ve no idea what they’re on about
3. Your updates are boring
4. It’s all about being social. You haven’t even sourced the content, let alone generated it
5. Those that don’t know about autofeed think you’re a vampire…
So, don’t do it!!! Be social! It’s not that hard to fire out 4 tweets a day, especially if you have a smartphone. And if you haven’t got time to source useful information and links to post, follow and list the right people and they’ll highlight those articles for you! Just make sure you read them first!
Don’t fall into the autofeed trap!! If you can’t be social, don’t use social media!
