Outsourcing Social Engagement; A Recipe for Failure I am not against outsourcing, nor using freelance workers, however, I believe for social engagement is it a recipe for failure. Before I get into that, I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me yesterday.I read one of the "spam" type marketing emails that often fills my inbox with hype. This one was about some "super spun" articles. It was a way I could get lots of articles for a super high price, but lower than actually having articles individually written. They had a glowing presentation (hype) about how great and unique these articles would be. It was exciting. I was excited. I was on the edge of my seat ready to shell out US$200 for some health articles. It would be a great addition to my health website and I could make not only the search engines happy, but the people who came to my site happy too. I could rock the world and make a difference! The main reason everyone would be happy is because the content would be unique and not what they just read on 10, 000 other websites. Plus someone who actually knows English will have reviewed the articles and they would be grammatically correct. Unique, grammatically correct articles, what more could I possible want? Just as I was pulling my credit card out of my wallet, I noticed they offered some free samples. I clicked on the link and up popped a small window with two articles. The first one, "How To Make Your Diet More Nutritious Today". I couldn't be more interested. I was excited. Finally, some great articles to populate my health site with. The first paragraph ended with "You can find some powerful suggestions in the tips below." Now we're talking! Some power tips for a more nutritious diet! This is really good stuff! Well, until the next sentence anyhow, "In order to have good nutrition, you need to eat based on the right reasons." Say what? That might be grammatically correct, but is complete nonsense. The reason you eat has nothing to do with good nutrition. WHAT you eat does. The next sentence continues, "Emotional changes are common for most individuals, on a daily or weekly basis." Who can disagree with that, and I might even add that emotional changes are often the result of good or poor nutrition, but the article doesn't get into that. That sentence has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the article. The samples weren't really "articles", but rather a series of pretty much disconnected, completely, boring, uninformative sentences that are strung together. Each sentence may be grammatically correct, but in the end nothing has been said, so what is the point? The article has no mention about eating fresh or organic food, or avoiding chemicalized processed foods. So really, it has nothing to say about making your diet more nutritious, and didn't offer any tips, much less powerful ones. Now, if I was to write an article on the same topic, I might start with something along these lines: -- Why are people afraid of a nutritious diet? Without hesitation people will grab a coca-cola, or any packaged "food" that has an ingredient label full of things they can't pronounce much less have any idea what it is or where it came from. No one seems to have a problem stuffing their faces with handfuls of that stuff everyday. We think nutrition and stuff junk! I grow a variety of green stuff in my kitchen (beside the mold)! It is all fresh, alive, green, tasty and bursting full of nutrition. Roughly 80% of the people I offer a taste too flat out refuse. The other 20% are very hesitant. How can people be so afraid of 100% whole natural food? -- Now we have the start to a good story, it sets up a conflict, processed vs natural foods and also involves personal experiences of myself. I can weave it into something that is not only informative, but captivating as well. The main reason I can do that effective, is because I have personal experience with the topic. The same would go if I was to write about model rockets and my experiences as a child. However, if I sat down to write an article about real rockets and going to the moon, I'd be lost and my article would just end up being a dry rehash of whatever I could find online. That is why you can't use outsourcing or freelancers for your social engagement. Your social engagement needs to be alive and emotional and based on your experiences. You need to leap out and grab your network's attention. Not with slick marketing hype that almost suckered me out of US$200 for what could have been monkey written gibberish. Forget marketing, forget hype, go for story telling. Be involved. Get people who are involved within tvarious processes within your business to be involved with your social engagement. Don't sanitize it, don't purify it. Be real! Be alive! Here's a blog post written by someone with the same viewpoint... Expert Page: What is social engagement? | 
