Fighting for Attention

The Web is a noisy place of 24/7 conversation. It’s at once exciting, inspiring, emotional and sometimes quite confusing. It’s never silent. And if you’re in the middle of the noise, it can be extremely challenging to not only get, but to maintain attention. Many companies and individuals are attempting to use digital marketing strategies to try and increase business, but getting lost in all that noise can cause a sense of desperation. And that desperation can make people feel like they have to really fight to get noticed.

Every day I see people mixed up in the desperation. They are fighting for attention, using any way they can think of to coerce (or even dupe) others into clicking a link. And once that link is clicked, it’s nothing but “me, me, me” and “sell, sell, sell”. I see blog post after blog post with a catchy headline like “5 Ways to Solve All Your Problems Today” that contains nothing but poorly written fluff and meaningless drivel. These bloggers and companies honestly believe that they are doing “content marketing” right. But in actual fact, they are doing nothing more than producing junk food. They are the bad reality TV of the Internet, and while they might be getting clicks, their acts of desperation are not likely getting a lot of business in the door.

No More Fighting

Here are a few truths about that buzzword of the moment, “content marketing”. It’s not a quick fix, easy solution that you can just spend a half hour a week on and expect instant results. It takes a lot of time and effort, but most importantly, it takes careful consideration. Consideration of the kind of story you want to tell. Consideration of who you want to tell that story to. Consideration of the type of media you’ll use and how you’ll use it. You can’t simply barf up a blog post once a week using that three step formula you found on howtomakeblogsmoregooder.com and expect that you’ll get results (and by results I mean more money in your bank account, not a retweet by the A-list blogger du jour).

If you run your content marketing efforts from a place of desperation you’ll always be fighting. However, if you run your efforts from a place of thoughtful consideration, where you’ve thought long and hard about your audience and created and published something of real value, then you won’t have to fight so hard for that attention. You’ll fight less because your content is useful to people. You’ll fight less because it is created from the heart, with your personality and wisdom and experience reflected in the words. You’ll fight less for attention because people pay attention to the good things.

Having great content means you don’t have to fight for attention.

What say you?