I will admit it – I am completely disinterested in reading anything that isn’t salacious, violent, incendiary or focused on weight loss. Frankly, I think all digital content should be dedicated to serial killer reporting and bariatric surgery success stories – even commercial financing blogs could surely incorporate violent offender mug shot slideshows in a tasteful manner.
Nevertheless, I am completely aware that most digital marketing consultants would shudder at the thought of embracing my revolutionary innovations into their content development strategies and will only implement more socially palatable marketing solutions. But I will suggest, for the sake of my own enjoyment as well as the general readerships’, that you make your content braver.
What is “bravery” in this context, you ask? Bravery is personalization; having a point of view. But don’t all blogs, micro blogs and posts have a point of view? Pardon me while I laugh so hard diet Coke spurts through my nose. In my experience, content managers are deathly afraid of publishing anything that might alienate anyone and compromise their marketability to every single demographic. This is why you see millions upon millions of “blogs” that are simply regurgitated news items that do not in any way hint at personal perspective or usefulness. These businesses are hitching their wagons to stories that have some degree of built-in public curiosity and industry relevance in order to softly create an association without commenting on it directly. Timid, timid, timid.
Now, I’m certainly not advocating aggressively marginalizing a portion of the population that could just as willingly give you money and attention (there is nothing more desperate than misguided edginess), but if you use your content to try to speak honestly, directly, specifically and intimately to your audience, that audience will invest both emotional and monetary currency into your effort.
Don’t worry about being wildly in your face and controversial – there’s already a Perez Hilton – but if your content strategy is wholly governed by the desire not to offend your consumer base, then it is entirely likely that you are busily creating keyword-optimized content that is thoroughly ignorable. This is like a restaurant deliberately serving the blandest, most non-allergenic, nutrition-free and culturally neutral food products because literally everyone is physically capable of eating them. [Slogan: “Taste nothing, but digest it comfortably!”]
I’m begging you – give me a reason to read your content. No matter what services you provide or what it is you sell or what your brand identity is, I guarantee you that the only truly unique commodity you have is your authority in the field of being you, and that is something that could possibly earn a devoted following.
Guest writer Holly Troupe is a professional web content writer and an amateur everything else. She spends her days writing, eating, and looking for ways to incorporate the term “perfidy” into the urban vernacular.
