You’ve heard that before, I’m sure.
And it’s true, inasmuch as the entire internet is really just content. Your website, Facebook, marketing emails, heck, even your Google Ads are really just little bits of content chopped up and assigned semantic value to each digital passerby.
And certainly the “content marketers” of the world want you to believe that content is how you get your business to the top of the pile. Google certainly has made content king. They crawl, sort, filter, and rank all the lovely bits of content all over the place. Then we all bite and scratch each other in attempts to be Google’s top dog for “best muffin in Saskatchewan” or “winning lottery numbers” or whatever keyword du jour users are batting around the interwebs.
But when you look past the Googlebots and webby creepy crawlers and cookies and social networks and databases of databases, who’s really reading our “content”?
People.
You know, those fleshy, human-y, emotional, feeling, touching, sharing, caring, thinking things that cover our planet.
And what do people really want to read and watch and participate in?
Content? I doubt it.
Writing for People
In my experience, people love to read books and online journals; watch plays and TV shows; sit very quietly in movie theaters; glance at pics of their friends’ kids and pets; or listen to their brother tell scary stories around the campfire.
These things aren’t necessarily content. I mean, you could classify them as content.
But WHY do people love these things?
They are stories!
I think the last few years of using Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and all these other massive databases of content have turned marketers into unthinking, unfeeling content-creating automatons. Because it’s way easier to produce quantity over quality and think you’re getting the same results.
I mean, look at Facebook. If I post 5 times a day, I’ll definitely get lots of eyeballs. I’ll certainly get more than I would if I posted once a day or, heaven forbid, once a week.
In this day and age, people would make you believe that marketing online is really about quantity. And therefore, it’s just about content. Gobs and gobs of content. And yeah, of course you should mix it up a bit so people don’t get bored. I mean, no one only wants to click links to blog posts. So throw a photo or two in there. Shoot another iPhone video of a poorly lit talking head.
But where’s the story? And who really gives a crap?
Who Cares?
I’m so tired of “storyless” content. And I’m betting most of our customers and followers are as well. I’m betting they’re tired of a brand re-hashing (and re-hashtagging) the same topics with an only-slightly-different-but-very-catchy headline on their blog. I bet they’re tired of top 10 lists that look like all the other top 10 lists (but with your product at the top). I bet they’re tired of cat photos on your technology company’s Facebook page. I bet they’re tired of animated GIFs that you found in a 2-second Google search for “funny animated GIFs for my corporate blog”. I bet they’re tired of your ALL CAPS PROMO DISCOUNT SUPER SALE. I bet they’re tired of your 10-hour researched, keyword-rich landing page that did nothing to help them find that craft project that their 5-year-old is going to remember when she’s well into her 40’s.
You know what I bet they’re not tired of? Your amazing, remarkable story.
Stop making “content”. Start telling your story.
Need help with this? Hit us up! We would love to help you tell your story.
