By nickjohnson - April 4th, 2013

Sorry about the MySpace reference

Over at the Marketing Sherpa blog, Jonathan Greene gives his opinions on choosing which social platform is best suited to your campaign.

His view?

Facebook: Your audience doesn’t expect marketing messages. It expects relatively unstructured discussions of varying depth on pretty much any topic. You’ve got to be very interesting to get any traction

Twitter: You’ve got pretty much no time. Make a big impact quickly, to justify further exploration.

LinkedIn: Your audience is pitching itself. Any contact you have with them has to fit within that context.

While it’s undeniably important for companies to pick the right platform to distribute their content, far more companies appear to be falling at earlier hurdles. What are they?

The wrong content for your audience

There are far too many examples of companies picking a type of content, or a focus for content, that simply won’t work for an audience. What do I mean?

TYPE OF CONTENT FAIL: One could point to QR codes being put on menus for Radisson Edwardian restaurants. Ok - one gets to see one’s food being prepared. But would anyone do that? Take out their phone at the table, open a QR code reader and sit watching the lamb being cooked while their dining partner gets increasingly annoyed? Surely better to put the QR codes somewhere that doesn’t take people away from another activity. In the lift down to the lobby, for instance?

FOCUS OF CONTENT FAIL: The point of content marketing is to attract and begin a relationship with people who are potentially going to buy your product. It’s not simply about collecting data, it’s about getting the RIGHT people into the top of your marketing funnel. That means your content HAS to be aligned with your product. Colgate’s ‘Oral and Dental Health Resource Center’ works. Seat’s free music for car lovers? Not so much.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your views on both the right platforms for your content, and common content marketing fails..

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