Thank you for sharing on Twitter (even though you didn't read it!)

Thank you for sharing! but this was kind of an experiment!! Firstly if you’ve shared this then thank you! But the point i’m demonstrating is that on Twitter people retweet content every day without actually reading it! I could have been making an entirely different point here. I could be putting a downer on your business, I could be spreading racist or hateful views or just talking utter rubbish! And you shared it! You didn’t read this but you shared it! Why?

As a business owner the content you share, whether it be your own content or someone else’s is sort of like a recommendation for your followers to read. The trouble with this is that if you share mediocre or slanderous content you are recommending something that you don’t stand for which can make your followers seriously think about the type of person they are following and even doing business with! (providing they read it too of course.)

I will know that if you shared my article within a few seconds/minutes of it being posted that you didn’t read it.

So why did you share it so quickly?

Well I think the main reasons are because:

1. you know me and like me and expect me to produce neat content! in which case thank you.

And / or

2. You don’t know me but you needed some industry relevant content to share to your target audience to show that you can show that you are on top of the whole content sharing thingy that you are supposed to do to make your readers think you know your stuff when it comes to business.

Isn’t this what they tell us to do? – Share content, retweet – make sure it’s relevant to your target audience! – But guys seriously the content you are sharing could be really bad.

Let’s look at it like this:

The experts say that I must produce content so that google will LOVE me and my website.

What happens?

Millions of people produce mediocre content just for the search engines and for ‘social media’- you share this content and give this rubbish content the thumbs up. – This isn’t so bad if the content is okay but what if it’s black hat content written specifically for search engines?

I have actually seen people share content that looks like this:

’5 reasons social media is great for business’

Social media is great for business because yesterday I brought my first pair of shoes of a link I saw on facebook – etc etc.

Do you see where I am going with this?

I’d love to know if you have been guilty of sharing content you have never read or didn’t intend to read – come on, I know you have, I’ve done it!

Confessions below!