2013: Year of Content
Every time I write a post in this blog, never in my wildest of thoughts it occurs to me that so few a people are going to visit it or how it is not going to be a top destination for random, poorly articulated, half researched articles that obviously would get a much traction it deserves. But it ain't happening, it's like a sex tape released to go bacterial, shot in a poorly lit room, bad audio, non HD version, no celebrity or look alike, and there you're, buried. But then it doesn't matter, does it. Because, I am the content con. More conversations with marketers these days lead me to believe that the new black of digital advertising is now CONTENT. All the champions who sold us "the conversation" and "social media marketing" for the past two years have suddenly evolved to "content" experts. However the good thing is, it's anything you want it to be conveniently favoring the "content producers" like me :) You can upload anything on web and boom, Content! However how smart a man would it take to figure out that 99% of it is garbage and that it will die anonymously without getting any attention whatsoever. Of course before this smart man figures it all out there are going to be good cheers for few winners, a tiny fraction that will have everybody else jump in and make it almost a success before it all will fall apart on its own but not before they would have next buzzword. This is obviously the content come back because last time around it didn't really work. Remember blogs? and how every company had a section on their main corporate websites getting updated regularly for keeping it fresh, I guess it had something to do with SEO but look how it turned out: - over 25% of "fast-growing" companies identified by Inc magazine who had blogs, dropped them.
- only 23% of Fortune 500 companies have a blog anymore, reports USA today these numbers were alarmingly high, unto 63% back in 2008-10 but then kaboom, quiet! The comeback is of course Facebook and Twitter, the lazy man's blog. And why not? I mean doesn't everyone else has one? Plus it is much easier to update a Facebook stays or write a tweet than updating a blog requiring a post. A lot of content goes in there that would require lot of research or understanding or stuff you don't have. But tweets and fb updates are simple, right? Here is Coke's tweet: For your to-do list today: “pay a compliment to one friend and one stranger” #HappyMonday
and Pepsi's Facebook update One way to make this the best week EVER is to ____. (With a picture of a Pepsi can.) drew over 4,000 likes. (The pure content con) As user-generated-content was almost becoming the standard, the marketer's took the control (too much negativity around the product/brand/services etc.), and in trying to emulate the user-generated-content, they are relentlessly dumbing it down, devolving into empty platitudes. 2013, It will be the great year of content without the content.