Social Content Gathers Audience and Spurs Discussion

In new business and client presentations when the issue of creation and publishing of social media content arises I often chime in with my "thought leaders have to have thoughts" line.

This zinger typically draws a chuckle.  Yet, I then emphasize a critical point about the foundation for success in social media marketing:  to attract an engaged audience or readership an organization must embrace the responsibility of articulating an opinion, even if there will be those in the market who disagree.

I first wrote about this topic nearly three years ago in a blog post that defined the 3Es of social media content creation -- educate, engage and entertain.  Today, I am more deeply committed to this social media content responsibility having participated in nearly 50 corporate, sales-oriented social campaigns.

Consider the GovCloudTalk program Strategic Communications Group (Strategic) works on in partnership with EMC.  Tim Harder, one of EMC's private cloud subject matter experts, recently published an interesting post raising questions about Amazon's decision to remove WikiLeaks from its cloud platform.

EMC's Tim Harder

Did Harder employ the journalistic best practices demanded by editors in newsrooms across the country in crafting this post?  No...yet he didn't have to.

Social media is all about well presented, informed opinions that gather an audience and stimulate discussion.  And that's exactly what Harder accomplished.