Web 2.0 was the broad-sweeping idea that any individual could be a content creator, and a broadcaster. This was and continues to be exciting, but there was a problem built into the proposition: eventually there will be too much content.
The pay-to-play model is how many social platforms are trending, and it’s to address the issue of too much noise. Brands who have decided to “get into” content, but aren’t sure why, or how to do it. Like brochures, they often believe it’s something you generate and cast into the world wantonly.
Boredom is death; to be emotionally arresting is paramount. It’s trending towards people first, business second. Brands must create truly unique content to matter.
Diversity in Social Outreach is a Canard
For years, social media marketing meant brands would have a social media presence across as many networks as possible. Eventually, they graduated to community building and providing those communities with content that would encourage engagement.
But people viewed these platforms as amplification channels through which to beam the same message. There are many companies, and indeed many agencies, continuing this wrongheaded practice. Tailoring content to each individual platform is a strong indicator a brand knows what it’s doing. But cross-posting the same piece of content is a poor strategy. Social platforms are not merely amplification devices, they are community building tools and each platform has its own unique demographics and best practices.
From Twitter to Instagram, each platform has its group of dedicated users, and as the years go on these groups become more distinct.
Some customers might use Instagram as their platform of choice; others might choose to spend most of their time on Snapchat and Twitter. Here’s the trick: you don’t need to be on all of them, but once you know where your audience is, you must build the content to fit the platform.
[bctt tweet=”Make sure the content you post is built for the platform.” username=””]
The Only Way To Win Is To Not Play
Traditionally brands have invested heavily in content to drive social media engagement, with the notion that organic reach was sufficient in achieving meaningful business outcomes. While organic reach on search engines is a long-game but ultimately useful, social media is no longer organic.
The way Facebook and Instagram function is when you make a standard post, it will show the post in the feed of around 10%-15% of your audience. Based on how that particular fraction interacts with it will decide whether it gets rolled out to the rest of your subscribers. Even Twitter recently switched to build your individual feed based on relevancy rather than chronological. The pay-to-play model is here to stay.
For this reason, social outreach should be viewed as a type of campaign; it’s a short game to get eyes on the content. This is why content should be viewed as a long-term asset rather than an immediate boost. The immediate boost comes from you putting money behind it, but a good piece of content can get you years of views, promotion, and engagement. If you are counting on this content to stand the test of time, it must be carefully crafted, it must be thoughtful, and it must be totally unique.
If you do that, you will be making an online monument that won’t need to play by the rules of constantly evolving social and search platforms.
[bctt tweet=”View content as a long-term asset and invest in it.” username=””]
Slow Content is Good Content
The future is quality of the content you make, not how much of it you make just to feed the community beast. Innovative marketers are embracing a solution – the slow content marketing movement.
Much as the slow food movement argues less-but-better food will deliver improved health results, the slow content marketing movement insists less-but-better content will deliver improved marketing results. If you can produce content consistently, great. If not, think quality over quantity. Remember, it’s an investment.