I recently attended Social Media Marketing World, so my head is aflood with all kinds of great information. Judging by author and social media expert Mark Schaefer’s session, “The Future of Social Media: What Businesses Need to Know,” information is the name of the game for the foreseeable future.
In his session, I was floored to hear that by 2020, data will increase 600%, 75% of which will be created by consumers, not companies. We’re consuming 7x the content we did a hundred years ago. But man! How can we possibly handle more without getting what Schaefer calls “content shock?” How can companies even hope to make a splash in that high volume of data?
The Secret to Standing Out
Schaefer says the secret is:
“You don’t have to be the best. Just be first and awesome.”
He went on to talk about how brands can shock and awe their audiences:
- Find an unsaturated niche.
- Build an aggressive strategy based on keywords.
- Never stop.
In other words, it’s the constant diligence of producing content and being on social media that will effectively help your brand swim upstream. Or at least, that’s what I took away.
Leverage Influencers
Schaefer also talked about finding influencers who can also help you get your audience’s attention (as did John Jantsch in another session). He calls it “borrowing a bigger pipeline,” which essentially means finding those people who are talking about your industry (or even your products) and connecting with them to have a bigger impact.
He suggested using a tool like Appinions, which identifies influencers in a given market and helps you measure your own influence online.
Don’t Sweat the Big Content
In an era where it seems blog posts are getting longer and longer, Schaefer contradicted this trend by saying not to worry about producing big chunks of content and instead focus on atomizing your content.
Tools like infographics and Vine make it not only easy to create smaller, more manageable bites (not bytes) of data, but also make content more appealing to consume.
“RITE”ing Great Content
Schaefer closed his presentation by giving advice that doesn’t just apply in the future as it relates to content marketing, but also right now. He said that content should be:
- Relevant
- Interesting
- Timely
- Entertaining
He stated:
“Power comes from content that moves.”
It’s not enough to simply put content on your site. It’s got to do its job in attracting your audience and engaging them.
My Takeaways
Given that I am a content marketer, this presentation hit home. It’s daunting to consider how much more content we’ll have online in the next few years, but getting a handle on it now will help us continue to engage readers for our brands.
He inspired me to consider how I can inject fun into my content marketing, as he said being entertaining is definitely a must-have in terms of great content. Not every blog post or whitepaper has to be serious and educational.
I’ll be rethinking every article and aiming for his requirements of being “RITE.”
Flood Photo via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
I agree. I have seen so many bloggers focus too much on their content that they forget how to promote their content. The magic is in the promotion.
The magic is in the promotion. I like that!
Naomi@business start ups
Hi Susan,
Thanks for sharing some of what you learnt from Mark Scharfer. I was recently told by an industry leader that we will be drowning in content by 2016. I think the float has already began.
I just try to appeal to readers as individuals. As though I’m talking to them only, as a friend. And to give a good useful take away action.
By the way… Love the image you used
Naomi
Naomi–
I can see that we will be flooded with data. I just hope we figure out how to manage it before then.
I can’t take credit for the photo! My editor put it in.
Susan
Joseph
Interesting and very relevant to some research I’m doing with DCU (Dublin City University) Invent, Ireland.
I’ve been tasked with conducting a survey with people who purchase digital content (photos, graphics, video, feature articles, etc.) for business purposes (advertising, marketing, publishing, news, etc.).
I am particularly interested in people who buy content from image/content libraries such as Getty Images, Corbis, Alamy, Shutterstock etc. and smaller, niche online libraries. We are looking to get insights into the what, where, when, how, why etc. of content purchasing.
Unfortunately, my contacts in this group of content buyers are limited and I was wondering if any of you would kindly pass on the link to the survey to anyone you may know in that field (it’s anonymous).
I am more than happy to share the results of the survey and have left space for people to provide their email address at the end of the questionnaire – a copy of the results will be sent to those who do.
If you can help, or know anyone that can, the link to the survey is here:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FindingDigitalContent
Many thanks,
Joseph
deborah shane
Susan, thanks for the recap, for those of us that couldn’t be there this year. I find that consistency, having an authentic point of view, delivering solutions and building and nurturing a following are all important. I couldn’t agree more about the importance of promoting and sharing content, especially with those that have an interest in it.
Thanks for your comments, Deborah. I think the flood of data will shake out the authentic storytellers from the rest.
Yes it is true that promotional activities shouldn’t be sidelined rather all stress needs to be given on output than input version. As it is a fact too that handling too much of data is a headache for most of us, due to which the work suffers many a times.