Is most news we receive just disposable chatter?

The Internet and social media in particular has made feeding news to customers and prospects easy. But is this news overload welcome?

The ability for everyone to be their own publisher has bypassed the editorial review of traditional publications with the result that 'news' is published in volume, but really very little of it is actually news.

Consider why businesses want to keep in touch with their customers in the first place. Essentially it is that when it is time to buy a new product they are well disposed towards the brand and also there may be accessories or related products they can also sell them.  So you need to keep in touch, both to keep the customer/prospect database informed of new products and to make them feel good about the brand.

Question. Is a daily bombardment of so called news going to make them feel positive about the brand? Well - probably not. The risk is they will simply switch off by unsubscribing or more typically just directing your communications to trash. And the problem with that is the really important news gets missed in amongst all of the chatter.

Then there is another consideration, some news channels are trusted more than others. For an example a favourable product review in the leading industry magazine is more likely to have greater credibility than the same news on Facebook. But here is yet another dilemma. What platform do your customers turn to for news? It is traditional media - for B-2-B printed magazines - or desk top computers, or mobile devices?

And given this matrix of news v chatter, trusted sources v trivial and traditional publication platform v  mobile or other connected devices is anyone researching what their customers actually prefer and trust.