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<\/div>\nWe want to see pictures, stories and opinions from friends, family and independent, likeminded strangers. The last thing we need is more white noise from brands who make the following statements in their weekly content meetings:<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s make sure we push all that out in social too.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTell the intern what you\u2019re doing so she can put it on Facebook.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be relevant. We should definitely do a Wimbledon\/summer festivals\/Egyptian riots themed quiz.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBut people can never get enough pictures of cats\/food\/Cara Delevingne.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n However. There is a place for brand-created content in social, as long as every single piece is designed to serve a purpose and provoke a reaction. We\u2019re not talking retweets or likes. We\u2019re talking about three simple categories:<\/p>\n 1. Content that inspires.<\/strong> The aim here is to get other people actively creating their own content about you, your products or whatever topic you\u2019re talking about. So this could be a provocative question asking specific people for their opinion or ideas, creating a Pinterest board where you can showcase your customers\u2019 images, or a disruptive Vine with a call to action for others to get creative.<\/p>\n 2. Content that engages.<\/strong> This could be sending a loyal customer a personlised Vine saying thank you. This could be spending some time bantering with industry folk on Twitter. This could involve asking your Facebook fans to suggest which ice cream you buy for the office that afternoon. It\u2019s not always profound, but always creates and cements relationships.<\/p>\n 3. Content that educates.<\/strong> Whether you\u2019re answering a customer service query on Twitter, posting a one-minute how-to video on YouTube or creating a Storify that helps summarise the controversy around the GM foods you refuse to use in your products, you\u2019re being useful. And brands being useful is very refreshing in a world of brands that want to be our friends.<\/p>\n That\u2019s it. Inspire, engage, educate. This doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re content shouldn\u2019t be reactive and fluid and quick. But it does mean that your content will be geared towards achieving something tangible, and that our platforms will be much less full of aimless brand rubbish.<\/p>\n So please, think before you publish. Leave the unthinking social diarrhoea to those of us without KPIs.<\/p>\n Make every post count.<\/p>\n Molly Flatt<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I hate the phrase \u2018content is king.\u2019 Content isn\u2019t king. Content is as common as dirt, and there\u2019s far too much of it about. If you really think the world is waiting for your brand to pump more \u2018visual creativity\u2019 into the space, you are deluded. We want to see pictures, stories and opinions from … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[137,371],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-mollyflatt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5044"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5046,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5044\/revisions\/5046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thesocialcmo.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}