My wife points out that I still haven’t learned to do the dishes the right way. She says I use too much water. Like most things, she’s right.

September 1, 2021

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5min read

Sam Frentzel-Beyme

Relationships & Revenue

Dishes, Virality and Social Media

The Short of It

  • The ease of social media can make it a dangerous focus.
  • Social should not be about the group, but about the value being shared.
  • Asking "Is this information amazing enough?" can help to highlight what information is really valuable.

My wife points out that I still haven’t learned to do the dishes the right way. She says I use too much water. Like most things, she’s right.

Part of it is the fact that it’s the way I’ve always done them (I’m getting better, though). I tend to let the water run because there never is a split sink and, well, it seems easier and the water is kind of just there waiting to be used.

The lesson? Just because it’s there and easy to be used doesn’t mean it should be.

Social media can be viewed the same way.

The biggest challenge is that most organizations don’t really understand how the “social” part works. Most social media strategies, if we can call them that, really focus on the media aspect and look at social really like another distribution channel for existing content.

Social is not about simply sharing information with a group users or “Likers”. It’s about sharing information that is so valuable, interesting, and impactful that for another person not to share it makes them feel like they’ve missed out on something. Naturally, this isn’t easy, but at least thinking about social media from the perspective of, “is this really interesting enough, no amazing enough, that people will really care?” gets things going in the right direction. This is where interesting things begin to happen.

Social media, like any communication tool, has lots of benefits, ease of use simply because it's there just isn’t one of them.

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