The Pressure to Generate Content

Posted By Hollis Thomases on Sep 10th, 2010

Ask any social media expert, consultant or marketing firm about how to market through social media, and they’re likely to tell you to get ready to generate boatloads of content.  Blog content (posts and comments), video content, Twitter content (tweets, retweets, shared links), Facebook content (Wall posts, events, photos & more), LinkedIn content (updates, Group discussions, connection requests), photo sharing content, podcast content…the list feels like it could be endless.  As someone who both generates content and advises others to do so, I’m not oblivious to the fact that not only is the constant need for content a potential thorn in someone’s side, but I’m also not immune to the pressures content creation causes.

Make no mistake, though:  Online content has been and continues to be King.  Those advising others to generate content are not misguided in their guidance.  More than ever, people are insatiable content carnivores, and they want to keep feasting at the table of never-ending, newly-created content like King Henry VIII’s hungry courtiers.  The danger is that this insatiable appetite is a beast of our own creation, and its belly is growing ever-larger.

The Insatiable Beast
Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment

The more content that gets created, the greater the pressure to generate more content seems to be.   Not only is it advisable to create content if you want to help your organize reach its social media marketing goals, it’s now becoming inadvisable NOT to generate content.  In other words, you snooze, you lose.

The frequency and pace of content creation has also accelerated.  It used to be OK to post new content at least once a month; then it became several times a month; then multiple times a month and now it’s almost a daily requirement for some — even multiple times daily.  It feels like content creation has become an obsession, a competition, an addiction where the top players seek to outdo one another to claim some sort of crown like Top Blogger or Most Prolific or even Most Personal Life Exposed.  Is this obsession healthy?  Is it good marketing?  If you’re not trying to build and market a personal brand, is it necessary for a business to be a never-ending font of content?  Does it even make sense for a business to place so much company effort, resources and attention on generating overly-generous amounts of new content, and could there be a backlash from doing so?

I have to say, in observing this trend towards generating mountains of content, I do have to wonder if the efforts are all worth it or, even if they are, what tolls is the effort also exacting on those responsible for the content?  Within my own experience I have seen no less than these varying circumstances:

The benign and helpful:

Conference attendees live-blogging or -tweeting from within a session audience;Bloggers with writer’s block asking the Twitter universe what they should write about

Benign but less helpful to themselves?

Conference attendees leaving a session early to be the first to compile and post an entry about a session (but they may have missed the best part by leaving early);Video bloggers excusing themselves early from networking events so they can off to a quiet room or leave altogether so they can film their latest “genius post.”Content generators not even attending events at all because their content generation responsibility overwhelms them altogether

Not so benign:

Hijacked content — When other websites scrape your blog (or your blog headlines via your RSS feed) and house it on their own sites, making it look like it’s their own content and if nothing else, using it for their own site marketing purposes.

Uncredited Web Ad.vantage RSS Feed/Blog Content

In the hijacking instance, the saving grace is that the hijacker at least provides links back to your site (see the last section for truly evil offenders);

Unattributed content — These days, particularly on Twitter, it’s not uncommon for original authors of tweets or content to be completely bypassed or removed from receiving credit.  When this happens, the poor sap who put all the time and effort into writing a piece to begin with gets no visible benefit…other traffic coming to their article, but by then, it’s always possible that the reader of the article doesn’t connect the dots or doesn’t care.Content Managers having to play bad cop and rat out under-delivering producers to supervisors;The pressure to produce content trumping other business priorities that otherwise get left unattended as the content developer struggles to churn out a new piece;Content produced under pressure leading to mediocrity — Too many social media content pieces these days are just useless fluff or “link bait,” serving no other purpose than to entice others to link to it which in turn helps elevate the content’s visibility within the search engines

The evil:

The worst Link-baited content could also house scams, worms, viruses or other maliciously-intended postings;Stolen content — Don’t be surprised if you find your original content re-published elsewhere on the Web without any credit or even a link back to your original post.  It’s difficult to police this too.  Try doing some searches for unique phrases in your content and see what comes up.

So what’s my point?  Thought I clearly still value the production of content (why else would I be writing this post, right?), I encourage you to avoid falling into the pit of creating content for creation’s sake.  Be judicious.  Write good material that people actually want to read and find value in.  Consistently good content will generate trust in your reader and that trust and demonstrated subject matter expertise, can bleed into your marketing efforts to positive effect.  But whatever you do, don’t succumb to the pressure to generate content to ridiculous extremes and definitely don’t sacrifice your personal life to do so.  Sure, you might end up viewed as a great writer, but many a great writer throughout history died penniless and in misery.  Seriously, it ain’t worth all that.

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Pragmatic, professional advice with no hidden agenda. 

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Internet Business Forum

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