Jim Murray

7 years ago · 3 min. reading time · ~10 ·

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Learning To Write For Yourself {Part 2}

Learning To Write For Yourself {Part 2}

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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?
 

The posts people like
to Ee oh i those
that reveal the wost
about the writer

(f youre afraid to tell
eople what youre
really feeling, hen all
our posts Will ever be
is part of the clutter.

www.bebee.com

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

My blogs are all accessible here on bebee.comI am also a Featured Contributor at Bizcatalyist 360˚https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/author/jimmurrayYou can also follow me on social media:beBee: https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-murray-b8a3a4/Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/y97gxro4 - ~ Jim Murray ~
| am an ex-ad agency creative director, writer,
art director, strategist, editorialist, reader,
TV & movie watcher. | have been actively
posting on social media since the early 2000s.

| live with my wife on the beautiful Niagara Peninsula

in Canada and work with a small group of companies MURMARKETING
who are making a positive difference in the world. ~ STRATEGY & CREATIVE ~

 

COPYRIGHT 2021 MURMARKETING
My blogs are all accessible here on bebee.com
I am also a Featured Contributor at Bizcatalyist 360˚
https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/author/jimmurray
You can also follow me on social media:
beBee: https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-murray-b8a3a4/
Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/y97gxro4


If you liked this post, let me know. If you liked it enough to share it, please feel free. 
 

Comments

Jim Murray

7 years ago #3

#3
This is spam. I believe you have been reported.

David B. Grinberg

7 years ago #2

I'm always in awe of your prolific prose, Jim. I've shared this buzz on three hives for writing/publishing/blogging. BEE well, my friend!

Zacharias 🐝 Voulgaris

7 years ago #1

I think the search engines (particularly the more successful ones) had a role in all this. By promoting sites that were "fresh" (i.e. with fairly new content, even if that content was BS), many website owners joined the blog movement, which dictated that everything on the web should have a blog aspect to it. Maybe that's why social media became so popular, who knows? What I do know is new content, even if it wasn't original or useful in any way, was favored by the search engines and had a positive effect on the pagerank (PR) of the sites I monitored (and this effect was measurable and statistically significant). So, if search engines favor new content on the web, if this content has a proven positive effect on the PR of the sites, and if it's fairly cheap to motivate someone to provide this content (even if it's quality is questionable at best), why not go for it? Your competitor is short-sighted enough to do it!

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