This past week, I was talking to a guy who was decidedly an anti-social media kind of guy.
“Everybody on Facebook is a bunch of narcissists.”
Sure, OK.
But he understood that he should have a Facebook page for his business. So despite his distaste for the platform, he has created a page.
He showed me this tool he has been using to take all the work out of having a Facebook page. He’s like, “Check this thing out! I can take any feed that I want to and plug it in and this tool will automatically share all their posts to my page.”
Awesome, right? Constant content with no effort by you.
He was using RSS feeds of local news outlets and other industry-related publishers to create Facebook posts that link to every story they publish.
So I went to check out his Facebook page, and I had to look back probably 15 or maybe even 20 posts before I found a single engagement on any of his content.
Automation was killing his marketing. It might be hurting yours too.
He (or you) might rebut, “But at least I’m posting something. It’s better than not posting anything. I don’t have the time to make my own content.”
And therein lies the myth: something is not better than nothing. Mediocre content is worse than no content at all.
Every piece of content you publish contributes to how your brand is perceived. If your content is impersonal and spammy, your brand starts to take on a sheen of impersonal and spammy. Even worse, some of the headlines were controversial news pieces that also colour his brand with a certain tone he might not be intending.
There are things marketing automation is great for. We use it to some degree for almost all of our clients. But trying to automate everything you can is going to lead to a cold brand.
Sure it makes your life easier. Sure it reduces the amount of effort and resources you need to put into things. But be wary.
There are plenty of software companies out there pursuing your subscription dollars. They’re promising all sorts of enormous things and claiming to be the next miracle tool. But there are always trade-offs.
The best and most reliable way to get strong, awesome results in your marketing is to put in the work.
