Welcome to the world of content marketing: where there’s either humans to interact with or robots to churn out the same boring content. And the robots are taking over.
Terminator style. Like when Schwarzenegger gets hit by the semi and dragged and still gets back up and takes control of the truck. Yea, it’s getting that bad.
Robotic content is at an all time high and we can’t seem to escape it. There’s a lack of human connection, of interaction, of emotions. As content marketers, we continue to churn out white papers and blog posts and webinars as if every single person in our audience is reading and watching our every move. But they’re not. Newsflash: They probably haven’t been. Because they’re bored of the robotic output.
Your static content isn’t cute like Wall-E or helpful like Rosie is to The Jetsons. It’s like Schwarzenegger as The Terminator but with the body of his California governor days, both not good looking and definitely not helpful or someone you wanted to interact with.
Take back the world of content marketing!
And we’ve got some of the best behind us stating the same thing! We wanted to share some of our favorite recent articles with you all about the world of content marketing and the need for human connection. Here’s what they had to say:
Tony Zambito released an article on how modern marketing can no longer be robotic. Your audience isn’t falling for it anymore. They will be quick to pick it up. Not only with marketing automation, automated emails, scheduled social shares or tweets, but within your content as well, there needs to be a strong human connection.
“From my vantage point of helping organizations and interviewing buyers, there is a missing link occurring. It has to do with buyers desiring high touch in a high tech world. Businesses today risk, in using new digital technologies fervently, losing the human connection with their customers and potential buyers. Through such fervent activities related to automating marketing, organizations can unintentionally create the opposite of what they had hoped to accomplish. Which is, “de-humanize” their digital and content marketing efforts!”
Mathew Sweezey (who we’ve quoted before because we absolutely love his thoughts on valuable content) released his article stating the unfortunate fact, 71 Percent of Buyers Have Been Disappointed by Content. Sweezey brings up the valid point of supply and demand, and how those basic economics affect content marketing the same way. There’s too much content out there. We know this and there’s nothing you can do about it. But what you can do to stand out is to create genuinely useful and authentic experiences with your audience.
“Content is an elastic market because you will not die without it, meaning that the more content choices a person has, the less value each piece of content has to them. Content is no longer novel; just having content provides no value to them. In fact, your company is expected to have content, because it is both necessary and ubiquitous. Due to the amount of content consumers are exposed to, they get to see really amazing things, and they expect to have similar experiences with your content. They do not expect to have their minds blown with visual appeal, or movie magic, but rather want authentic and helpful experiences.”
The last article we wanted to mention is one from Econsultancy by Graham Charlton. We’ve talked about how content is too robotic. We keep saying how visitors are less and less impressed with content. You know that they’re expecting helpful and engaging experiences. But how can you achieve this? Do what Graham Charlton did: be useful! He gives the perfect list of fifteen tips for your content marketing. Take a look for yourself and grab some best practices along the way.
Our personal favorite tip is his very first one: Define your target audience before you start to produce content.
“Think about audiences rather than customers. The aim is to produce content that is compelling, but also aligned to your brand. Take a look at your best customers, and your most engaged visitors, and try to figure out what kind of content attracts these people. What kind of content transforms a visitor into a customer?”
Get to transforming that content, and quickly before you get left in the dust with the rest of the robots. Don’t let the terminator of overused and robotic content take down your content marketing. Create your own style, be useful, and make each experience your visitors have with you an unforgettable one.
Curious about what others are saying regarding your static content marketing? Just take a look at Demand Metric’s latest benchmark report. Register now and receive the free report right away in your inbox!
