Social Media and Headline Culture
How to Reach More People on Social Media—Mixing Broccoli and Cheetos
Reaching people on social media, in a headline culture, where your sub-par work outperforms your best work
It has happened to all of us and many of us more than once.
No matter what kind of content we post on social media, there are those moments of devastation.
You worked your ass off on an article — went above and beyond in your editorial standards, research and references.
You were passionate about the piece and did great work. You took your time looking for the perfect images and refined every sentence at least twice. The formatting is flawless and the perspective unique.
You have done some of your best work and you know it.
You even read your piece again, yourself, and are thinking, “Yes!”, in your own mind — to your own words.
You can’t wait to share your work of art.
If you are like me, you publish it and walk away from the screen because the excitement is killing you and you don’t want to watch a pot boil. Or, maybe you submit to a publication and wait for a response.
When your work has been published long enough to get some steam and you have accomplished other things, you go back to look.
You fall off your cloud as you open your story and…
crickets…
You have few comments compared to usual, or even worse — none.
You start to think of why no-one would be seeing this work of art. But, upon investigation, everything is fine.
It’s all in one piece, tags are good and title is perfect.
As you are looking at your stats, you see — probably not for the first time — that the top-performing articles were the ones you cared about the least.
You wrote about how Beaver butt secretions are used in vanilla, on a whim, and it went triple platinum.
Maybe you wrote an article about one tiny quotation mark that got picked up by the largest publication, got triple curated and performed like a champ.
Regardless of your particular case, you cannot wrap your mind around why the work you love the most, and often work the hardest on, bombs next to your lower quality work.
How? Why?
Do people care more about things that matter less?
Do I only think I did great work?
In what we will call my ‘college days’ in the great world of social media strategy, my peers and I had a name for this phenomenon. We called it broccoli and Cheetos.
People eat more Cheetos than broccoli.
Western culture has a nature that can be very self-destructive. People consume in large quantities, but even worse, we consume a lot of things that are bad for us.
Now, consumption goes far beyond eating, drinking or buying. We consume constantly. Based on information theory, we consume 50 bits of information every second.
We consume whatever we allow into ourselves whether it be via our bodies, our minds or our spirits.
We talk a lot about watching what we eat and buy. It’s no secret that over-spending and over-eating are no-no’s — socially. But we don’t talk much about watching what we read, watch, listen to and even think about.
In Western culture, the majority of people aren’t eating healthy. We consume massive amounts of poison on a daily basis. We eat and drink things that don’t serve our bodies at all — because they taste good.
You see, many people are not only eating things like Cheetos more often than they are eating broccoli — but they are reading Cheetos too. They have Cheeto friends, they hang out at Cheeto places — working Cheeto jobs and living Cheeto lives.
In defense of Cheetos everywhere
Before we move on, I must come to the defense of the beloved Cheeto and those of us who don’t hate them.
I was a food snob some time ago. I would have cut off a toe before I ate a Cheeto. Now, I don’t eat Cheetos more than I eat broccoli, but I do.
I appreciate Cheetos and all their diverse flavors. Cheetos are incorporated into a variety of cultural cuisines.
I am a lover of Texas. Corn in a cup from the shaved ice truck next to HEB wouldn’t be the same without Hot Cheetos.
The world wouldn’t be the same without Cheetos.
You can make corn in a cup at home. Here is a great video showing how — just don’t forget the Hot Cheetos.
Cheetos and Cheeto lovers everywhere,
Please understand that I am just using this as an example and we are still totally cool.
Sorry to all Cheetos for stealing your name and adding negative connotations, for the purpose of social media slang — but what is done is done and I can’t take it back. Bad engagement is still engagement and, hey, you are an icon. What can I say?
Moving on.
Back to the Cheeto lives
We don’t only consume massive amounts of food and drink that are bad for us, we are addicted to consuming Cheeto-like things in every way.
This statement sounds really mean. It sounds so mean that I thought about removing it. But it’s not written because it’s mean, it’s written because it’s true and I had to understand it to achieve success on social media.
Many people are not only eating things like Cheetos more often than they are eating broccoli — but they are reading Cheetos too. They have Cheeto friends and hang out at Cheeto places — working Cheeto jobs and living Cheeto lives.
The purpose of this concept is not to accuse some people of living Cheeto lives and place them beneath their broccoli-loving counterparts. We all have some sort of Cheetos in our lives, to some degree, and we could all eat a little more broccoli.
The point is, Cheetos aren’t as good for you as broccoli and we consume a lot of Cheetos while we often push the broccoli to the side. ‘We’, in this case, is specifically referring to the great big world of readers, viewers and potential fans.
Your work of art is the broccoli. Yes, it is much more valuable than the Cheetos, but it doesn’t taste as good. Plus, the Cheetos are cheaper.
Your story provokes meaningful thought and provides great informational value. But that meaningful thought that you put into your work requires the meaningful thought of the reader. And just like we don’t always want to eat healthily, we don’t always want to think healthy either.
We live in a microwave, drive-through and headline culture. We want fast and convenient. We don’t want to have to do the work — generally speaking.
Plus, our communities are flooded with depression, addiction, abuse and suicide. People are unhappy.
We want things that give us a dopamine hit and make us feel different. We want to escape our inner selves — not dive into ourselves.
Mixing the broccoli with the Cheetos
If you are reading these words, chances are that — even if you eat Cheetos sometimes — you are also eating your broccoli.
You don’t want the masses to die of all the health ailments that come from living on junk food, so you cook up some broccoli in a way that you think they might like — you write. You create. You produce.
You do your craft — whatever it is. And you create things that will benefit people. You share things that will help the world — things that are good for people. You share yourself to help others grow in whatever way applies.
But, wait… people don’t want your broccoli. They are like the kids at family dinner that just want the chips in the cabinet.
So what do you do?
Start making unhealthy snacks that only make people feel like they are nourishing themselves?
Forget about whether they remember anything about your story — just clock the reads and throw away the sustenance?
Will you watch them walk away, knowing you have given them nothing of value and only fulfilled their needs for escapism or a hit of dopamine?
The answer for me is, absolutely not.
I don’t ditch the broccoli, I just serve Cheetos as well.
If you never serve the Cheetos and only serve broccoli, people who don’t eat broccoli might stop coming to your parties. They will never even get to see all your future extravagant broccoli dishes.
But if you serve some Cheetos too, everyone can find something to snack on and the Cheeto lovers might stick around. And one day, they might finally smell a broccoli dish that makes their mouth water — and take a bite.
I think of it as meeting people where they are.
They may even find out they like broccoli — thanks to you. 🙂
Written by Holly Kellums
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