Fast Company blogger Francine Hardaway recently posted an entry entitled, “Marketing Emergency: Nobody's Making Content Worth Reading.”
When the email notification hit my inbox, my initial reaction (before even reading it) was, “Hallelujah!” And after reading it, I still couldn’t agree more.
But here’s what’s interesting: Not everyone in my organization agrees with this POV. Here’s an excerpt from my email supporting Hardaway’s position…I've long believed (and promoted) that content is king. But somewhere along the way that mantra seems to have deteriorated into, "Fodder is king." We're fast becoming a society of talkers rather than doers. Like all of you, I'm all for generating meaningful content – but I remain hopeful that we’ll keep an eye on the actionable. What true insight have we provided and what action do we want our readers to take? (Understanding that includes thinking about things differently – or considering things they may have otherwise ignored.)Seems like a no-brainer. But it sent a few of our social gurus into a tizzy. Here’s an excerpt from one of the responses I received…Writing meaningful, compelling content is an iterative process, and the harder we make the process, the harder it will be to create content. I think we need to have a bias for action – and yes, maybe create some content that doesn’t rock the world (and take 10 days to write). Translated another way… let's not overthink voice, tone, structure, POV, etc. Let's just DO IT.My visceral reaction to this response was to deliver a Frank Reardon raspberry. Then I had another thought… why not ask our community? So here it is: What do you expect from the content that you consume?
Is it ok to simply regurgitate the thoughts of others in an effort to proliferate the information? Or are you more interested in a specific POV, including suggested action items?
Along these same lines, what’s your opinion of the Klout Score? I think that it relies too heavily on the quantitative indicators of impact (i.e., # of responses, # of shares) – data that supposedly reflects a person’s ability to influence. I’d be more interested in a qualitative impact index – one that reflects the quality of the content by allowing people to rate it based on specific criteria (including how actionable it is).
At any rate, this topic has fostered some lively internal conversations. And I’m very curious what our community thinks.
Thanks for your comments. crk
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