I was looking at some metrics today and one struck me: over 80% of the top trafficked websites are now social networks.
Yet we (read: the tech industry) are still designing our content the same exact way we have been for the past two, five, even ten years.
And it's not just one tech company. I think it may be literally every tech company.
When we have a message to get out, the default is still “write a blog” (web); “make a web page” (web); “make a (YouTube) video (web); "make a press release" (web).
Social is an after thought: "Did you promote it on social?" Build for web. Promote it on social.
Ahh yes, social media: the digital outhouse.
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Meanwhile, the rest of the world has moved on.
And effective content strategy has moved on with it.
It's no longer a single-mode out there. There's no "one engine" or "one consumption medium" to rule them all, as there has been for so long. Now there are multi-modes to navigate: Twitter, Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, reddit and beyond.
And with these new modes, users don't behave the way they did with traditional search engines or traditional web pages; their behaviors are different.
- They consume in feed.
- They are not going to linger long on your post.
- They are not prone to clicking through. Your message needs to come across in three seconds, largely visually. There's a strong chance they won't be coming back to your website. The pivot, now, is towards "micro-stories."
- They only see what their peers share (or what is promoted to them).
- They like and are attracted to motion but they're not actually listening to audio (unless we're talking Audible, Spotify, etc.). The mainstream social platforms all autoplay in mute (as will reddit, when native video hosting gets enabled). So: are your videos designed to "land" in mute, with a 6 second consumption rate?
Beyond optimizing to these behaviors, we also need to consider creative approach.
It’s not just a matter of creating content so that it exists, so the spiders can crawl it, so it can be found. It’s now a matter of creating visually appealing content that can survive the challenge of democratization.
Creation isn’t good enough. Existing isn’t good enough. Now, we need to *entertain* as we inform. If we are in marketing, we are all, effectively and henceforth, in the business of media production.
Whether we want to be or not.
The old school of thought, of, “We have this really important message that needs to go out” needs to pivot to “How can we show our value in a way that is appealing, interesting, and dare we say it, even exciting to an end user?”
Think of it like lobbing a message-in-a-bottle out to sea. The sea (users) decide if the bottle is worth carrying to the destination (end user/target). If the bottle fails to past muster, it sinks right away. Point blank: it has to be a darn solid bottle to survive the trip.
Bottle-making is a skill. It requires a conscious effort made in every project. The one question to ask, and to keep asking, is, “is this story/bottle I am trying to tell genuinely interesting to other, general-purpose humans?”
If the answer is no, cancel mission. Smash bottle. Come back and try again.
The worst thing you can do is continue on the old default realm of thought: which is basically writing business messages in a voice designed for crawler bots. If this is your approach, you'll keep lobbing these bottles out and watching them sink.
The best thing you can do is listen to your user signals (engagement, clickthroughs, etc) and pivot. What do users want to hear and how do they want to hear it? Build that into your bottle, and you'll have a damn fine chance of making it to other shores.
Even if it is a stormy, and increasingly competitive sea out there.
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Addendum:
One of the reasons I like working for a startup/earlier-stage/visionary company is that we can try new things and pivot with market changes. We're able to try out short videos, to show that they work, and to use things like memes and GIFs to make an impact.
We're seeing the findings above, and we're able to move on them.
One of our partners came out with a blog yesterday, that was a bit dry before we went to market: but our team was open-minded and merchandised around a "moon landing" metaphor. That blog, which in its original incarnation, would have honestly netted a handful or less of impressions, is now, 6 hours in, netting 35+ engagements on every platform.
Organically.
A competitor, who shall not be named, who has approximately 8x our LinkedIn followers, isn't netting more than 20+ engagements on an average post.
Thank you, creativity, thank you, open minded teammates, and thank you, moon landing metaphor bottles :)