There’s so much content everywhere. Once there was mainly print and cinema/television. That now seems like such a long time ago, doesn’t it.
And it’s not just the number of media platforms, it’s also the way we access them. Innately interactive and proliferating every day, these platforms ambush us with possibilities we’d not imagined even a few years ago. Facebook was for kids, blogs were for personal musings and journalists, Twitter was fun in 140 characters. Not really.
Linkedin, Snapchat, Instagram… the platforms kept growing and brought with them avenues of reaching and meeting your audiences in astonishing new ways. There was the website for quite a while, of course.
As we surf between our phone and our laptop (or the sturdy desktop that’s stood by you through it all for nine long years), always engaged, never quite offline, there’s a sense of a big wide alternative space which lets us communicate as we haven’t ever before. It allows us to tell our story in more persuasive ways, go beyond and make contact more viscerally; and take our brand to unknown and as yet unexplored interstices in the audiences’ minds and hearts.
So much can be done. So many opportunities. And so, content has grown rapidly.
There’s audiovisual and written communication everywhere; for we can’t not be seen, heard, felt on these vibrant new platforms. The ease of access and the comparatively lower tariffs add to the abundance of material. There is also the need to be constantly current, content is often ephemeral. “Update” is upon us. A content storm rages.
But how much of it makes contact in any real sense? For instance, how much of what you see, do you remember? Does it really add to a brand’s story? There is great promise in these media. However, a lot of content is becoming mechanical. Words churned out. Visuals thrown in. The parts of a story in place, but the sum of them not greater. Not a great deal of what we come across is meaningful.
Given the volume of material to be produced and the time constraints, it is certainly a challenge. One might wonder if meaningful content is even possible. You might even argue, mechanical is all that one needs. We agree, in certain cases, like when you’re listing the specs of a product or a service, that may be true. But not otherwise. Otherwise, it’s worth exploring richer, more valuable content. Meaningful content. For this makes your story more memorable.
Many things might change, but the basics, never. we don’t just want to be seen and heard, we want to be remembered. And for the right reasons.
We’ll be back next week with our thoughts on that last thing. Have a great weekend.
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