Content with your content?

It's maybe a human thing to always want the magic pill that makes us younger, lighter, healthier, fitter, more handsome, more beautiful, etc. etc. Faced with a choice between lifestyle change, doing things we don't like doing, stopping things we do like doing, and thus having to face some real work and pain, we would prefer to pop the magic pill. But as anyone over 30 must have realized, for almost all of us, there is no such thing as the magic pill. 

For many in business, after resistance to it for as long as possible, social media suddenly appeared to be the magic pill. They could be used as the weapons of the newly fashionable "inbound marketing", relegating stodgy old outbound marketing to the history books, or at least to the old-fashioned (i.e. old) gang. It looks so easy! Write up a shopping list and go to your marketing people and IT department and demand some cute little icons, as the law dictates! I want a Facebook icon, that nice dark blue one, yeah, and pick me up a Twitter bird, and why not a cool YouTube video bar for good measure, too? Oh, and you're not done yet young man, why does this company not have a blog? Set me one up, and have if full and fully functional by this afternoon, if you want to stick around here, okay?!

There we go. All nicely up-to-date, with some fancy social schmocial icon birdy things on my site, and now I can sleep at night again. What does not seem to have been explained or assimilated by some (many?) is that the icons in and of themselves can be totally meaningless. A bit like having a menu on the door of a restaurant but when you look inside, you see that the place is empty, or worse, the fridge is. People ain't dumb. They stick their noses in, see that nothing is going on and they don't even like the smell, and they move on. You can add the icons, you can appear to look trendy, you can open an account on this or that, but if you are not going to focus on content then what is the point? Social media engagement feeds on quality content. Just like the Google spiders. Having the account with boring, smelly old content is worse in my opinion than having no account at all.

One of the things that makes me smile, and often, is the additional fall-out from those who suddenly paste on the cute little icons like a new silk tie on an old frayed suit. Some, it seems, think that this is carte blanche to do nothing new with their website content, or to even let it slide, because they have a Facebook page now. Some little chit-chat and photo posts on FB will distract people from the fact that our website is crap and hasn't seen new fresh content since Moby Dick was a sardine. Okay, that's exaggerating perhaps, but maybe since their last new car. Content is always King, and all the social media (which also need feeding content) will only carry you so far, if your website content is average or crap. The rule is simple: social media are all designed to drive traffic to your website, and if your website hasn't been working of late, driving more traffic to it is not going to do much of anything for you. It's like a line of cars backed up on a bridge, and none of them knowing there's a dead-end at the other side. Going nowhere, and fast. It is even preferable to be present on what might appear to be have been a self-made website (EU, for example!) but which is inviting, warm even, and stuffed full of interesting content, rather than the oft-seen current trend in minimalistic (i.e. bland) and unengaging mosaics. I always ask myself: is it minimalistic due to who was hired to do it, or the personal zen tastes of the owner, or is it really because he/she has got little to say and no key content to provide?
Your website will always remain your flagship for focus and key content, and it is mandatory to keep it top level so that the various other media actually can do their jobs, and work for you. Social media are your cars, driving passengers towards you, and your (website) content is the fuel on which they continue to run to you. 

Unless real effort is put into restoration and construction of highly engaging, conversation-making, traffic-driving, subject matter-relevant quality content? Social media will do little for you. Driving people to your door who then don't like what they see and barely come inside, is like driving in a circle around the lake for the business owner: you end up precisely where you began. And you lost some time. Quality content cannot be whisked out of the air like magic. It needs to be worked on, and if you are someone who simply cannot generate great content for your own business, well that's saying something right there, but if it's the case, then find someone who can and quickly. Time is of the essence, and business waits for no one. The time is now. Get with the new breed, or step off. For those willing to commit to real quality content, instead of bland, vague, pompous sounding mission statements or functions, the rewards can be very rewarding indeed. - Kevin Mc