When You Have Nothing to Say, Don’t Let a Robot Say It For You
Wonder how everyone on Twitter suddenly became so thoughtful? I recently found out what they’re doing…
I was on my iPhone, browsing the app store, when I noticed the sheer volume of apps dedicated towards automating social media feeds. And I’m not talking about valuable, timesaving apps like Hootsuite, which let you monitor, batch, and schedule posts for your accounts. Those apps require your thought and input, and simply reduce the labor involved in maintaining a social media presence.
No, I’m up in arms about the myriad of apps designed to automatically populate your feed with general-purpose fluffy messages like “Life is worth living when you’re loving!” Zero thought, no personal investment—people just hook these apps up to their social media accounts and—voila!—they have an endless series of quotes or snippet-posts that make them appear thoughtful.
Weird, right?
Though really, to me, these apps are worse than just “weird”—they actively diminishes the value of the social medium. They bury tons of actually useful information beneath faux-inspiration, while completely removing the “social” element these platforms were designed to facilitate. What’s even worse—now when you reply to someone’s high-EQ tweet you don’t know if you’re even communicating with a real person! My guess? Much of “social” media is becoming “robot-to-robot” media.
Which is a shame, because I doubt that’s the outcome people or companies have in mind when they utilize these apps. Part of me sympathizes with them. It seems like every day a new social channel launches, and all we hear is how important these channels are, and how we must maintain an active presence on all of them. Yet most people and companies have limited resources to devote towards marketing and community outreach. They don’t have the time to do it themselves, and they don’t have the resources needed to hire staff to do it for them. In that common scenario, paying $2.99 to keep these platforms updated makes a lot of sense. In theory. But in practice, using these apps can cost you the trust of your audience.
The Missing Human Element
Now, let me be crystal clear—we are not social media experts at our company. Our social accounts are certainly a work in progress. However, the thought of automating this part of our business is absolutely absurd to me. We keep the human element front-and-center.
We personally explore and experiment with the social medium, and—most important—we put real human thought into everything we post to our channels. We aren’t above using a good inspirational quote now and then, but we’re researching and picking these quotes ourselves. We’re not having a robot do it for us. And guess what? By utilizing a completely human process involving thought, discussion, and a focus on our audience’s needs, we not only deliver better than a robot could automatically—we also get to know our audience a whole lot better, while sharpening our own thinking and intentions. And I’ve never seen an app offering insights like that!
Net, net—you can’t ask people to follow what you say, or even occasionally listen to you for that matter, when all you’re doing is programming a robot to send “inspirational spam” for you!
