Great Content Will Always Slay The Chaff
With people and companies now bestowing their knowledge onto others at an ever increasing rate, are we still tuned in or now turning off?
While the saturation debate builds momentum on information overload in a world of attention deficiency, is everything getting a bit too much where no matter where we turn, there is always an invitation for: 10/20/100 reasons to be a ‘rock star’ in something; the opportunity to learn more by imparting your email address for a pdf; packages to do something cheaper than the majority of the marketplace; tweets with hashtags on a subject with the expectation that you will flock to the name of that hashtag.
The Content Your Competition Produces Is Irrelevant
The way I look at it is that whilst it may look intimidating that there are many others in our respective industries grabbing the bull by the horns and being continually present and churning out content, it doesn’t mean that the content created is relevant to everyone else. Well crafted, considered and targeted content will always rise to the top of the class because people now have the ability to filter out what is noise and what is of interest.
Lets put this into context of a real world example. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of people have entered a marathon, the only thing that matters is that you can run, trained properly and feeling ready. No one enters the marathon with the aim to hit the front-runners and to have their face on the BBC with the leading pack, but to be relevant to their audience, which is defined as the charity a person is running for, friends, family and anyone who has sponsored.
Differentiate To Serve Our Audiences
The way that we can look to stand out from the industry competition who are quite happy creating content that is focused on their product and their own achievements via a news page that was last updated four months ago, is that we need to differentiate to serve our audiences. Rather than creating information that is pretty generic and just blends in with the rest (a good case from my industry is if I sat here writing about what a brand represented or the difference between PR and advertising) is to take a stance to solve other people/companies problems and pain points. The key message here is that creating good content has the ability to move and enhance consumer behaviour.
By providing solutions to problems and helping others understand where they fit in the grand scheme of things, isn’t about the wish to attract a homogenous mass but communicate to who is relevant to encourage participation and engagement (with the expectation to build an audience who know what you stand for and believe in).
The ‘Breaking Bad’ Example
Building a strategy and message is difficult and a challenge we all need to embrace. If it was easy then we’d all be king or queen of our respective industries. Finding reach today is harder than it has ever been. For many of us, when we find a platform to comfortably consume, then we stick to it. A good case is the increase over the past year or so of ‘binge watching.’ I can now count on both hands the amount of friends that have watched the entire final series of Breaking Bad in a few sittings as opposed to the old fashioned way of one episode per week (or worse still all 62 episodes in a couple of weeks).
Starting To Round Up
As mentioned a the top of the article we are swimming in an ocean that has information overload, but then again we have been for decades, when we put advertising, PR and direct marketing into the mix, it’s just the channels have increased tenfold in the past 10 years. More certainly isn’t better and the wish to communicate and to be everyone’s friend will eventually mean that you’ll stand-alone.
We need to concentrate our efforts on the target marketplace we can assist the best. To do this, great content engages, finds reach and communicates in a way that builds trust and is relevant to others.
