(Post 1 of 7: 7 habits of a digital marketing person)

Everyone is busy, and getting busier. This creates a challenge for publishers of content to fit into their lives. Newspapers, TV news anchors, bloggers and now Tweeple have to get attention through shallow high-impact headlines, whether their content is good or not. Now I know this isn’t new, but we’re seeing an increase and addiction to shallow content. This post is an example of debate fueled by headlines.

The reason for the addiction and trend is that as humans, we’re driven by some core motivational factors, one of which is fame/popularity/to be liked. And for brands it’s driven by mass media advertising. A TVC reaches 2M people, therefore I need 2M people following me on Twitter.

So I can give you 5 tips to double your readership, or number of followers, or Facebook group, but the question is, WHO is following you, and can you build a meaningful valuable relationship with them? What would you prefer, being followed by 10 of your potential customers or 10,000 who thought your last post was funny. I’ll talk about this later, in post number 5.

“@stilgherrian RT @simontsmall: The bigger Twitter gets the more impersonal it becomes. [No, it's about YOUR circle, not Twitter itself. You choose.]”

In business, this over simplification of intelligence is and has been rife for years (watch: Malcolm Gladwell) Malcolm Gladwell, explains choice and happiness. In quick & harsh summary, one day some brand managers and CEOs do some research and they find that 70% of people want something, lets say red shoes (as opposed to the standard blue shoes). So the company goes and makes what 70% of people want and the company plan to make profit :) . This seems like a good business strategy, however, the next day a competing company brings out the standard blue shoes with softer shoe laces, long shoe laces, flips, flaps and a range of other variants. The new blue shoe range sell like hot cakes, because people love them, and why did the first company miss it? Because they were looking for the single majority and they probably asked the wrong questions. (Please watch the presentation my Malcolm Gladwell to fully understand)

According to Birgit Leonhardsberger Malcolm’s core take aways are

    • Firstly, Moskowitz claims that the consumers don’t exactly know what they want.
    • Secondly, he tried to show that products aren’t better just because they are more expensive or mainstream products. People should choose the products that suit them, no matter how cheap or unpopular they are.
    • And lastly, he made the food industry realize that they have to try to please the individual people and not only the majority.

I believe a core problem is people don’t really know what they want, and they don’t know what they don’t know (watch: Donald Rumsfeld).

So as a content producer continue writing catchy headlines, love the masses, look for the silver bullet and you’ll miss out on talking to the right people, building trust and creating valuable and engaging content.

As a consumer of content keep looking for the magic potion & quick fix, take the 7 steps to happiness, never question anything and you’ll never really grow, learn or develop.

Key takeaways:

  1. So don’t buy into the hype & don’t be the hype
  2. Look for depth, reason, facts & stats
  3. When somone says something like “X is the future of marketing” ask why, how and what will it do for me.
  4. Marketing is about sales, not followers, readers and reach
  5. Followers, readers & reach MAY help you achieve your marketing outcomes
  6. People don’t know what they don’t know
  7. Realise what people don’t know they want
  8. People are individual and they love choice

In summary (thanks @adamgthompson)

Revenue from internet marketing will decrese if people just go for blanket one-line attention grabs without consideration of who they actually want a relationship with But…they will go up if they get it right.

This post is part of a series of 7 posts where I aim to illustrate “Marketing at it’s core is simple and obvious, the world ISN’T changing dramatically, we’re just creates of habit and have become set in weird and wonderful ways. As a digital marketing strategist I’m proud to believe that mass / traditional media works. Buzz words like engagement, relationships, dialogue, feedback 3.0 are ways for people to talk around real outcomes and facts. Marketing is ALL ABOUT SALES, sure, engagement is great, but do we sell more product now or in the future?”

View the 7 other posts here