A relentless focus on value.

A year ago, Peter Shankman posted this epic rant on social media “experts.” (I highly recommend it. The post is an ideal 101-level course on how to take a controversial but defendable position that drives conversation. Heat from readers isn’t always a bad thing.)

But I digress. Peter re-shared the post this week on his Facebook feed. One of the Facebook comments that followed really hit home:

"... I 'defriended' a business last week that asked me ‘What are you doing this weekend?’"

Feeds are cluttered. Lives are cluttered. Brains are cluttered. As social evolves, marketers can't be trite or disingenuous. We have to develop and continually sharpen a relentless focus on value when we engage our audience. People have 47 million other choices to which they can and will immediately turn.

A grammatical error or two may be forgiven. Valuable content is rewarded, even if it lacks some polish. But boredom, irrelevance and disingenuity? Those mistakes are punished immediately.