We thought no one cared what coffee you were drinking or what you had for breakfast on Facebook, LinkdedIn, Twitter and other social networks. Apparently they do.
Recently I read on the Social Media Insider that people cared what we had for breakfast. David Berkowitz observed that when people talked about what they had for breakfast, dinner or what move they had just seen, everyone commented. And I had noticed that one of my Facebook friends was always posting what she was making for dinner. Personally, I don’t care what anyone is making or having for dinner. But everyone else seemed to as so many people commented.
So I decided to find out if this was true by asking my friends on Facebook and contacts on LinkedIn: I just read on the Social Media Insider that people care what you had for breakfast. Do you care what other people had for breakfast?
The conversations started out fun and continued. People said no and yes, and let me know what they had for breakfast (ummm, that was not the question, folks). And then the conversation progressed to hunger in different areas of the world – in both Facebook and LinkedIn. There were 32 comments on one of my LinkedIn groups (and we thought it was boring) and so many on Facebook, it was hard to personally respond back to all.
Even though I use Facebook and LinkedIn to brand my business and reach out to current and potential clients, I’ve noticed that when I ask questions that often have nothing to do with business, people answer. Here’s an example: Seen any funny videos lately? Can you share them please? Yes, I received a lot of links to funny videos and I laughed away. Or What’s for dinner? Another popular question.
Is this about branding my company? No. It’s about reaching out to people and making them feel like they count. We all love talking about ourselves. So, when someone asks a question, we love giving our opinion or sharing knowledge. It’s what puts the social into social media and life. It’s about engaging with people. That is why we have to stay creative in our social media marketing efforts to reach our potential audience for business.
You’ve heard that if you are using social media for business you should share highly relevant useful information from your industry with your target audience. Perhaps you should change that to share highly irrelevant and boring information – at least to you.
My unofficial results of my experiment indicated that:
- People love quotes.
- People like to share what they had for breakfast, dinner and lunch.
- People love answering questions.
- People love sharing things not because it’s important to you, but because it’s important to them.
One of my LinkedIn contacts summed this up perfectly: “People care less about what others had for breakfast BUT they care more about sharing what they have had themselves!! We all like to put a little of ourselves out there…”
And what did you have for breakfast today? Oh and just for the record, my breakfast consists of four cereals mixed including Kashi Go Lean, shredded wheat, wheat chex, bran flakes, bananas, berries, dried cranberries and skim milk - every day the same thing - like a cat or a dog. Uh, like you care?
Hey, please like my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter (I'm not there quite as much, but I will be soon).