I escorted a loved one onto the World Wide Web over the holidays. It truly was my pleasure and honor, after years of his enduring my stories about Websites, RSS feed-reading, analytics, apps and podcasts. He—a brilliant guy and voracious newsreader who haunts the libraries but was able to spend only limited time on their desktops—finally could be online at home via his own 3G iPad and I was eager to help him.
Well, I had romanticized the Training Day. When the time for instruction came, followed by telephone calls and follow-up tutorials, I realized how much I’ve taken for granted about how different online content consumption is and how customization transforms the experience. Not to mention how frustrating the information exchange can be, for both parties involved.
It’s taken me a while to recover (yes, I think I’ll blame the trauma for the delay in publishing a Rock The Boat Marketing blog post in 2012) but I want to share with you some thinking that emerged from it.
The online content consumer has so many awesome options. That’s what I wanted to demonstrate to my newbie. The biggest difference? The ability to arrange for content he cares about to come to him, as opposed to him scouring paper publications looking for something interesting.
The flipside—what these content gathering and filtering options imply for the content producer—is what I take a stab at in the table that follows.
Reality Check
Before the mainstream use of social media and apps and RSS feed readers, etc., brands could focus on their own messages and their own delivery and promotion devices, control it all and do just fine. But given how content is discovered, followed and subscribed to today, a reality check is in order.
Brands, including mutual fund and exchange-traded fund (ETF) companies, need to consider how waves of online content consumers are being exposed to pieces of their work first and to the brand second, if at all. Realizing that content is found more often by topic, keyword or via endorsers necessarily forces a brand to be more gregarious and less set in its own ways. (On a related topic, see my July 1, 2009 post “Mind The Keywords—’Unfortunate Market Anomaly’ Won’t Help Search Traffic Find You.”)
I understand that my unregulated, unrestricted use of the social media and the Web is different from your experience as a corporate marketer blocked from accessing many, many sites. But I see too few of your firms’ content in the mix, where I go online and in the tools and services I use to extract industry-relevant content.
In this still new year, I urge you to consider the multiple ways people will encounter your content. I think there’s more for you to do to leverage your content, available content insights and your relationships with those who value your content.
What firm doesn’t crave content loyalists (the first row in the table)? But think of the others—those who wind their way around to you via a piece of your content (the subsequent rows in the table)—as prospective content converts. They represent your business’ potential for growth. Their path to you via your content deserves your close attention.
There’s nothing profound about this table and it’s not meant to be comprehensive. It’s just a simplified approach to thinking through some ways in which content is discovered and consumed and to what effect. I submit it for your review and comment, those of you who can. As always, if you’re not authorized to comment online, send me an email if you have a thought.
How Content Is Consumed And What It Means For Producers
| Does The Consumer Care Who Created The Content? | How Content Is Discovered/Consumed (examples) | The Content Producer’s Challenge | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content consumed because of who it’s produced by. The consumer doesn’t want to miss content from this brand or person and takes a deliberate action to keep in touch. These are the consumers that brands already know about and focus on. | Yes! | *Bookmarked Website *Brand’s RSS feed from Website or Facebook added to feed reader *Via a Twitter account added to consumer’s Twitter list *Via a Google+ circle *Through membership in a brand’s LinkedIn group *Email newsletter subscribed to | Something about you—who you are or the content you produce—has earned you a place on the consumer’s short list. But this isn’t the endgame—how will you keep and grow the interest and encourage their advocacy about your work to others? |
| Content consumed because of a business or personal interest in a topic | In some cases and to some extent, but largely no | *Via a Website subscription that regularly covers the topic *Via a subscription to topic-specific sections in apps like Zite *By following industry groups in LinkedIn Today | Content organized by topic competes with a lot of content in the category. Consumption will be hit or miss. Layout, placement, publication date, etc. will influence consumption. Good for you for triggering interest. What can you do to sustain it? |
| Content consumed because of the keyword or hashtag used. The consumer has such a keen interest that when it’s used, he or she wants to know about it. | Nope | *Via search engine searches *Via keyword search in RSS feed reader *Via keyword search in Twitter apps *Via Google+ saved searches | You have to be in it to win it—i.e., be aware of the keywords that others in the same content domain are using and use them deliberately. Once a keyword drives awareness and consumption of a piece of your content, what is there to learn from the consumption? And, to avoid being a one-click wonder, what’s your next move with the consumer? |
| Content consumed because of others’ endorsements | Maybe yes, maybe no | Discovered by following others via: *Flipboard reading of Facebook content updates *Tweets *Content posted in LinkedIn groups *Content posted by Google+ circles *Content recommended by Google Reader | To have your content included in “the firehose” is half the battle—what’s also needed is the interest and energy of endorsers in your content. What can you produce that will be so relevant and so differentiating? And how will you show your endorsers your appreciation? |
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Pat,
You’ve highlighted an important shift in how people consume content. Thanks!
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Pat Allen Reply:
January 12th, 2012 at 9:36 am
Susan, with the content that you share, on your blog, in the LinkedIn groups, on Facebook, in your tweets, etc., something tells me that you are right on top of this!
Thanks for stopping by.
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