The unpardonable sin of being boring

A few days ago I went to Spark and Hustle. Do you know what that is? It's a tour featuring the energetic career advisor Tory Johnson and her roving band of successful consultants and small business owners. Normally I avoid events like this; I find they tend to be heavy on bombast and cheerleading, and light on practical value. Every time I'm talked into attending some kind of whiz-bang conference, I'm bored and making grocery lists halfway through the keynote address.

But Spark and Hustle delivered the goods, conceptually speaking. A lot of high-value advice was shared in terms of both small business marketing and entrepreneurial psychology. It was also refreshing for me, on a personal note, to network with other women since most of my clients and subcontractors tend to be men. (Notable exception - Ron Gates from Constant Contact, who was smart and entertaining.) 

Most of the social media information was familiar terrain, as I create and manage it on a daily basis for clients.  But it got me thinking of how an avalanche of marketing advice courses through the Internet each day - and how generic, repetitive and ultimately useless most of it is. At this point, I think most of us could recite social media maxims in our sleep. 

The average business knows it needs to have a Facebook and Twitter presence, and probably a blog too -  and so they execute on those deliverables in a perfunctory checklist way, without any genuine interest in content creation or often the business itself. The blog goes unread, the tweets go unshared. Resentment and fatigue set in. This doesn't work, the business owner thinks. But it's not social media that's to blame - it's their boring content.

That's really what I took out of my Spark and Hustle experience. Most of the speakers did not have businesses that interested me. Most of the techniques they shared were old hat to anyone who's marketed themselves or others. But they were all so passionate about their businesses that listening to them was a pleasure. A passionate speaker is a riveting speaker. And content created from passion is riveting content, which is probably why all of the speakers had great success with social media.

What this means for the average business: handing over your content creation to someone who's bored by both the creation and your business is going to equal boring content. Yes, that includes some employees. Hire a good creative who knows how to engage your audience, or do it yourself and focus on the aspects of business you really care about. Only then will you command attention.