“Good content rises to the top.” No, it doesn’t. Not since Mark Schaefer coined the term content shock. Today we have to fight hard to get eyes on our content. Here is why good content isn’t good enough anymore:
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In 2014 content marketing and blogging changed forever – and since then it got harder by the day. Here is why and how to deal with it.
In this episode of Marketing in Minutes you will learn:
- Content Shock – why it’s important.
- How to grow your traffic after content shock – organically.
All in under 10 minutes!
More Information on Content Marketing and Content Shock
For a complete social media traffic generation strategy that we use every day, check out our book, The Social Traffic Code!
The original article about content shock by Mark Schaefer can be found here.
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Episode Transcript
Content Shock: Why good Content isn’t good enough
Content marketing is great – just publish helpful content, be the expert people need, and your business will rise to the top. But today it’s not that simple anymore.
I’m Jonathan Gebauer and you are listening to Marketing in Minutes.
Welcome to Marketing in Minutes by The Social Ms – the podcast that gives you all you really need to know about one marketing topic per episode. I’m Jonathan Gebauer and today, let’s talk about why good content isn’t good enough anymore.
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Whether you are blogging or creating videos on Youtube, or on a full-blown content marketing strategy for your business, you are always taking advantage of the one defining idea of the internet – the internet is a content network.
It was invented to bring information to its users. This information can be a social media post, or a product description, or a video – but there is always content involved.
For a while, there was an increased need for content on the web – and we marketers made good use of that need.
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Back in the years until 2014, the content marketing gold rush was on. Everyone wanted to do content marketing – us content marketers promised amazing returns on the investment.
Blogs were all the hype. SEO and social media marketing were all the hype. And it worked for while – we could deliver the results we promised.
But the sad truth about a gold rush is that there is never enough gold for everyone.
We’d done a massive miscalculation and marketing influencer Mark Schaefer was the first to notice.
He wrote a blog post titled “Content Shock – why Content Marketing isn’t a sustainable Strategy” – and I will link to it in the show notes.
In that post he highlighted a catastrophic event for content marketers – I’m serious, it seemed like a small armageddon at the time. Content marketers either panicked or tried to ignore the problem for as long as possible.
Mark had noticed that, while the amount of content on the web was exploding at exponential rates, humans can only consume content at a specific rate. So, at some point, these lines would cross. Content creation would exceed content consumption.
In other words: Content is an infinite resource that satisfies a finite demand.
What that meant for content marketers is that the investment needed to get eyes on their content, readers on their posts, people watching their videos, and so on, would increase on a massive scale.
Content shock is over now – and yes, I know – it wasn’t really Armageddon. But before it happened, it was a lot easier to get an audience for your content – and today it is hard to do that.
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The reality is that Content Shock wasn’t an event that just happened one day – it stretched out over years. Content shock is the reason why today we all have a hard time getting traffic.
But as I said before – content shock wasn’t armageddon and content marketing and blogging is still here. The real difference between now and 4 to 5 years ago for content marketers is that today we have to make an investment into our content.
But that investment doesn’t necessarily mean you need to spend money.
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The truth is that in the old days we didn’t have to invest anything. Back in those days, we thought content is king – so if we had content, then all was good.
But in my opinion content was never king – we were just benefitting from a momentary increase in demand.
When Google revolutionized search engines, it increased the need for content on the web. Social media did the same thing, and suddenly there was an opportunity for marketers to work with that need. But it was always going to be over one day.
In the early days of the content marketing hype, we didn’t have to do a lot to distribute our content – it could go viral on social media, or we could easily push it with rudimentary SEO knowledge. That doesn’t just happen anymore. We need more skill or more money to make it happen.
***
If what I just said sounded a bit frustrating, it’s wasn’t meant that way. Content businesses and content marketing existed long before Google and Facebook.
And there will always be a demand for content – but just like before Google existed, today the real king in content marketing and running a content business is distribution.
We have to think about distributing our content again and invest into it – either time and hard work, or money.
We have to do more than just create a content piece that we think is good.
When we talk about content shock and the difficulties of traffic generation today, we often forget that the real accomplishment of content on the web is not that it was easy to get rich. The real accomplishment of the web is that it removed the entry barrier for publishing.
This also means that no one will do your distribution for you. And although it may have been easy for a while, that is not the way it should be. Whenever you decide to run your own business, you have to learn new things to make it work.
***
It’s still possible to grow your traffic – even without money.
You have to start by assessing your competition and the needs of your target audience. There is always a need for new content – just think about news content for an example. We didn’t stop consuming news content just because of content shock. Things change – and we can develop new content from that change.
Your job is to assess those needs and create content for those needs.
The second thing you always need to do is to keep your skills sharp and develop them all the time. You need to constantly improve your online marketing skills.
You have to learn about SEO and new developments around SEO.
As an example for what you need to learn about: Think about voice search and it’s effect on SEO – and yes, it doesn’t have a big impact yet, but it will have an impact in a couple of years – you can be sure of that!
The same is true for your social media marketing skills – you need to learn all the time and improve your skills – if Facebook worked for you 5 years ago, it won’t work for you today. Today’s biggest social media marketing opportunity is Pinterest – but that can change in the blink of an eye.
If you keep up-to-date with what is happening and improve your skills all the time, then you will succeed in content marketing growing your traffic.
***
That’s all I have today – I hope you enjoyed this episode of Marketing in Minutes. For more information on content shock and specific help on how to deal with it, take a look at the show notes – which you can find at blog.thesocialms.com/MiM-25
And for a complete social media strategy that still works after content shock, check out our book, The Social Traffic Code.
If you like this podcast, please subscribe, and if you can, leave a review on Apple Podcasts.
I’m Jonathan Gebauer and you’ve been listening to Marketing in Minutes.
That’s all I have today – take care, bye.