5 ways your content adds to the noise online...

Not sure if you’re a “noisy” poster?

Here’s 5 ways that experts contribute to the noise on their followers' feeds.

If there’s one thing that we all can agree upon, it’s that there’s a lot of content circulating on the social media platforms. 

Everywhere.

All the time. 

And it never stops. 

How many times have you come across a post on your feed and thought to yourself, “why am I still following this person - it’s the same crap over and over again!”

Usually after that thought bubble forms in my mind, those people are promptly eliminated from my list of connections. 

And the same thing can be happening to you, and you’re not even sure why.

In your mind, and with the best of intentions, you’re simply sharing interesting stories and other content that you believe is valuable to those you serve. 

The truth is that everyone is inundated with countless pieces of content on a second-by-second basis and if you offer them an overt reason to mute or simply eliminate you from their social feed, they’ll jump on that chance. 

The question then becomes, well, what exactly is noise?

Honestly, one person’s “noise” is another’s jam, so the determination ultimately rests with the individual. 

Having said that, there are some specific noise-inducing approaches to content that everyone would do best to avoid when creating the stories and visuals they share with their audiences on a consistent basis. 

Let’s have a look at 5 of them now:

1 - It’s all about you...and not them

Whether you’re a speaker, author, trainer, consultant or other Expert-business owner, you’re in the business of building relationships. As a result, it’s important to not only share how you specifically help solve people’s problems through your expertise and experience, but also, you need to share who you are in order to create connection, rapport and relatability with those you serve. 

But, when you dip too far into simply sharing your life without creating a teachable moment for your audience, you can lose their attention quickly. 

Your online content needs to straddle the balance between offering valuable stories that speak directly to the needs of your audience while also introducing them to your life, business and what’s most important to you. 

Long story short, treat your content as if you were talking to a close friend and that will help balance out the way you share your insights and stories.

2 - All Fortune Cookie wisdom

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some motivational posts from time-to-time, especially during a week where I’m completely dragging ass. 

But every single day? Ugh, please make it stop…

YES, I know the journey begins with me, OK!

After a certain point, what initially started out in your mind as a great way to offer value to those who follow you, devolves into a wall of noise that has no inherent value whatsoever…

…Especially if you didn’t even pen the quotes yourself, and instead, are borrowing from great leaders and thinkers of the past. 

Long story short, a sprinkling of these types of pick-me-up messages over the course of a month are great to share, but a no-end-in-sight monsoon of these suckers month-after-month is going to soak your audience and motivate them to seek shelter in some other experts’ feed.

3 - “Billboard” Posters

So you spent some money and created a series of high-end graphics to help promote a specific product or service. That’s awesome - high-end graphic visuals add a level of aesthetic and prestige and goes a long way to position you as an expert figure in the minds of those who follow you. 

But when someone goes to your IG feed and sees an entire wall of the same graphic over and over again with minor text changes, that can be a bit much. 

Why?

Your feed is no longer a living and breathing representation of your life and business - it’s one gigantic billboard. 

And a noisy one at that. 

When people click on your social profile, or, in this particular case, Instagram, you want to offer them visual variety so that they feel motivated to freely click on a tile in your feed that catches their attention. 

The more they click, the more they consume. The more they consume, the more they learn about you and how you can help them. And that, over time, sparks a relationship.

When everything has the same visual layout, that opportunity is lost. 

Does that mean they will immediately jump ship and look to follow someone else? Maybe, maybe not. 

Long story short, don’t even create the chance for that to happen by creating a variety of visual content that sparks your audience’s curiosity to learn more about how you can help them. 

4 - Evergreen Content Monsters

So you created a series of wonderful pieces of content that you have in a content scheduler and there’s enough banked for at least a year. That’s great.

What sucks is that you haven’t updated this cycle of content in 5 years!

Ugh.

While it’s advised to get ahead on your content so you’re not scrambling to make shit up as you go, repeating the same stuff over and over again becomes really predictable and really boring. 

While the foundational principles of your expertise are set in stone, you can spice up your storytelling and avoid being noisy by illustrating your teachable moments with anecdotes from interactions with your clients and your own life.

You apply these frameworks and systems to new client work every day, which offers you an opportunity to leverage these new experiences within your content to show how you create transformation.

Long story short, freshen up your anecdotes so that it shares the same expertise in a new light.

It offers your audience a chance to resonate with the lesson more deeply by being able to relate to the new scenarios you share in the writing more easily. 

5 - All sizzle, no steak

Just completed a wonderful portrait shoot and wanna show off the eye candy photos? 

Of course you do! I can’t say I blame you :) 

But, for some experts, that means that once they select the photo(s) they want to post, the work is done once they smash that POST button. 

Waiiiiiiit - not yet!

Where’s the context? The story? The teachable moment for your audience? The way for them to get a better sense of your personality? 

If you’re simply posting photos where you look like a rockstar, that can become quite noisy. 

And predictable. 

And grounds for an unfollow. 

Long story short, don’t do it.

Create an opportunity for your audience to marinate on a teachable moment that compliments the emotional sentiment of that photo so that it’s a more revealing and compelling piece of content. 

Remember, simply sharing a photo without a story in the caption makes it all about you, and not about them.

At the end of the day, we are going to be swarmed by a deluge of content until the internet retires.

But, we can limit the way we contribute to that noise by being more intentional and purposeful with the way we communicate with our audiences. 

Send a clear signal to those who need you most and they’ll hear it loud and clear.

PS - If you’re interested in learning more about how to tell compelling stories for your audience, I write about it all the time in my newsletter. Wanna check it out? Sign up here and it’ll save you the commute to my blog :)