Learning To Write For Yourself {Part 2}

Part One of this series can be read here: https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/learning-to-write-for-yourself-part-one
 

Social media has turned a lot of people, who would otherwise have never considered themselves writers, into writers.
This came about through a fundamental flaw in the original design of content marketing. In the beginning the intention was that since businesses were doing less conventional ‘advertising’ (because of the rise of social media and broad based digital marketing opportunities) that funds would be diverted to content and all these content marketers would be hired to write blogs for these companies.
And in the beginning, that’s pretty much what happened. But because of the nature of content marketing many companies, not realizing what a slog it was to be paying for content marketers to create all this content for them (ie a time suck and a money suck), they began to phase out the outsourced services and start assigning people within their company with the task.
Financially this made sense, especially for smaller businesses who found that paying three or four hundred bucks for each post and literally tens of thousands for Facebook and LinkedIn company pages, added up very quickly.
And so a whole new class of writer was created. The non writer writer. These people were akin to the grunts who were drafted to fight in Vietnam. They were reluctant soldiers, learning on the fly and often coming up very short in the quality department.
In the case of smaller businesses these non-writer writers were often the owners of the business who knew more about their business than anyone and, hey, how hard could it be after all?
 

How Hard Indeed
 

The absolute glut of mediocre content that began to clutter up the internet was like a tsunami. Slow moving but large, flooding virtually every nook and cranny with unreadable crap. And it still persists to this day.
The downside of all of this clutter is that it has become exponentially more difficult for writers of quality content to be found and read. Because readers are now essentially looking for needles in haystacks.
The upside to all of this, you might think, is that companies are saving money by having their content created internally. And that would be the case if the content that was being generated was worth a shit.
In my opinion, these companies are much worse off as a result of these actions than they would have been had they kept on using professionals to generate their content.
Paul Drury is one of the few content writers I know who is still quite active in the service of providing quality content for companies. And if you were to ask him, I’m certain he could produce some very compelling arguments (both financially and peace of mind wise) on the plus side of content outsourcing.
 

What Goes Around Comes Around
 

Recently the world’s largest advertiser, Procter and Gamble, reduced their entire digital marketing budget my more 75%, citing lack of performance as the main reason. It would be naive in the extreme to assume that other large companies will not be following suit.
The simple fact is that you cannot create a concept without thinking through its long term ramifications. And the actions of companies like Procter are the beginning of the backlash.
Another current classic example is the infamous Muslim ban that was instituted (and subsequently overturned but the courts) by the current US administration.This legislation failed to take a number of very critical variables into account. I won’t go into the list. but it’s not short. This shortsightedness on the part of the this administration is now creating an incredible amount of backlash and so it should.
By the same token the digital marketing community, I maintain, did not think through the long term effects associated with the content marketing concept. And so when it quickly turned into a glut, and the majority of the content in that glut was sub-par to say the least, they had a big problem to deal with.
And there really is, the way I see it, no effective way to deal with it.
 

So What Does This Mean To You?
 

Well first and foremost, what it means is that everybody has to work harder to create quality content. Then everybody has to hope that it will somehow break through the clutter and do whatever marketing they have to do draw attention to their posts.
I have already written a number of articles on how people can improve their content. And to be honest, that’s all I can really do for now.
So my advice is that if you are one of the many non-writer writers, seek out good advice on improving your content.
Because otherwise you will end up as the part of the glut that never gets read.
Here are a few of the posts I was referring to:
https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/bits-of-marketing-wisdom-part-1-on-storytelling-engagement

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/bits-of-marketing-wisdom-part-2-on-digital-advertising-on-content-as-a-driver-of-brand-experience

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/are-most-blog-posts-just-a-ton-of-junk-here-s-what-i-ve-figured-out-lately

https://www.bebee.com/producer/@jim-murray/8-things-almost-anybody-can-do-to-create-better-posts

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