Tag Archives: influencer marketing

There’s a reason the first three letters of ‘content marketing’ are ‘con’…

25 Thursday Oct 2018

Posted by in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing

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Marketers are a weird lot. We love to over-complicate things. We also have a strange penchant for renaming existing tactics and marketing techniques that have worked sometimes for more than 100 years, just because a new media channel has been invented.

Take social media. Please, take it. I mean, is there any media channel that isn’t social? By their very nature, media and the messages published/broadcast in them are social. After all, we don’t have anti-social media channels do we?

As you know dear reader, since the introduction of digital channels, the resurgence of the emperor’s new clothes is complete. Cyber-hustlers everywhere have claimed new things exist where they don’t. Fake thought leaders try to convince gullible marketers that human DNA has changed forever, particularly when it comes to consumption of marketing messages and buying stuff.

the resurgence of the emperor’s new clothes is complete

And of course there’s the great content con. Apparently until the internet, there was no such thing as content for marketing purposes. I ask you, what do the content zealots believe has been filling every advertisement, brochure, video, billboard, sales presentation, media release, article, etc since year dot, but content?

To clarify the content situation I have created two lists:

“Content marketing” before the internet

“Content marketing” after the internet

As you can see, apart from a handful of new channels, marketers are still creating exactly the same content they always have – they’re just distributing it in these new channels as well as the traditional ones.

So why rename what has always been done just because we have digital distribution of traditional analogue content?

The illiterates are creating the content

But there is a bigger problem at play. Prior to the internet, content was in the most part written by professional copywriters and journalists. Art directors designed how the words were displayed.

In todays content-filled world, every unqualified executive who can type creates content. They operate under the mantra of “I type therefore I am…a content marketer“. In fact, many marketers avoid using trained and experienced writers and do their best to get Josephine Junior, or a mate’s son to write their content, manage their social posts, create their online ads…

If you weren’t aware, the OECD Adult Literacy Study revealed at least 82.5% of the population struggles to read and write competently. Yet it’s these illiterates who are creating the marketing content.

The mind boggles as to how marketers justify their folly. It’s one reason why I created www.thecontentbrewery.com a couple of years ago – it’s an anti-content marketing, content marketing website.

So if you’re looking to create content…..

 

Here’s some more content about content marketing:

Why there’s really no reason to ever use the term “content marketing”…

The 3 essential questions for content marketing success

How the content paradox and your A.S.S. Time ruin content marketing performance

Shell’s content marketing turns 40 and still sells

Good manners will always trump marketing content

Why most shared content has almost no impact on your brand

When will marketers and agencies call ‘transparency’ for what it really is…

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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There is no other industry in the world more hooked on the drug of jargon, than the marketing industry.

We are constantly inventing meaningless new terms for the same old thing. For example, earned media = publicity. Omni-channel = multi-channel. And so on…

One reason for this, is that people new to marketing (digital marketers) believe marketing was only invented five days ago and everything new to them is new to the world. My friend Drayton Bird demonstrated this in NZ recently.

Another example of our jargon-based mentality is the word the industry has recently manufactured for “dishonesty“. Its use reflects appallingly on the whole marketing industry. Rather than admitting that the industry, particularly the digital marketing segment, is chock-full of cyber-hustlers, liars and money-grabbing spivs, we’ve avoided stating the truth and instead, created a buzzword.

In the marketing industry “dishonesty” is now known as “transparency“. And this buzzword is being flogged to death in talkfests as the amazing solution to dishonesty, even though dishonesty is never mentioned.

In his weekly newsletter, Bob Hoffman recently wrote that Transparency is the phoney flavour of the month. He highlighted how talking about transparency, rather than transparency itself, is all that the industry is doing, giving these examples:

As Bob asked – Was there a parade? Did you have a Transparency Eve party?

As we all now know folks, the major publisher platforms and sellers of digital advertising have been lying for years. And now they’ve been caught with their hands in the till. But instead of admitting they are dishonest, conducting mass sackings of the people involved and cleaning up the system, they’ve created a buzzword – transparency.

Now everyone in the industry must worship at the altar of transparency, using the George Costanza belief system- it’s not a lie if you believe it.

And the industry prophets deem we must have even more transparency. A whole transparency industry is spawning. An Institute of Transparency will be created. Seminars, white papers, thought leadership and books will be published about transparency.

Explainer videos and transparency personas will abound. And like the cyber-hustlers who call themselves Linkfluencers or Socialfluencers, there will now be Transparinfluencers to guide you on your transparency journey.

Once enough noise is made to completely blur the truth, transparency will transform into the goddess of honesty. All the negative publicity will disappear. (or should that be, all negative earned media will disappear?).

Reminds me of the mindless followers of The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem in The Life of Brian.

Hallelujah – it’s a transparency miracle!

Transparency – it’s a miracle…

And like many things digital, nothing will change. The industry will continue to remain dishonest, sorry, I mean transparent. And the digital publishers and sellers will go back to what they do best, making money at the expense of their advertisers.

I think I’ll go watch Brian again, just to cheer me up – where’s my VCR?

Transparently connect to me: www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld

How the Connection Paradox and your A.S.S. Time ruin content marketing performance…

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in BIG DATA, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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A few years ago I coined the term “The Connection Paradox“. It refers to the conundrum whereby the more people you are connected to on social media, the less of their posts you see.

It is simple maths – the more connections you have, the more posts will be sent to you. But given there are still only 24 hours in the day, you have less time in which to see each post, so you miss most of them. Unless of course you have no life.

The truth is, just as most articles and classified ads in newspapers were never read, but they “reached” the audience, the majority of social posts and marketing content never gets seen, let alone read – even though it reaches your newsfeed.

Apparently, the maximum organic posts a FB user gets from their connections is between 3% and 6%, depending upon which expert you ask. So users miss the vast majority of posts unless they invest hours searching and scrolling. And now with Facebook and Instagram only serving posts based on user behaviour with previous posts, well it’s time to cue the banjo music.

deliverance

The posts you get are related to previous posts – creates strange relations…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both LinkedIn and Facebook batch updates for users. When you click on the updates button, the updates automatically download so fast you suffer a virtual waterboarding, as you cannot cope with the inundation of posts being digitally jammed down your throat.

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Batching posts causes virtual waterboarding when you download them.

 

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Most updates disappear below the fold, never to be seen. Worse still if you are reading them on a mobile device – you have to scroll even further to find what was just downloaded. While you’re doing that, another batch builds ready to waterboard you again at the tap of a button.

This led me to coin another term – Your A.S.S. Time. In case you’re wondering, I can generate the buzzwords as good as any of the cyber-hustlers.

Your A.S.S. Time is your Average Social Screen Time. On Instagram for example, it’s often less than one second. For LinkedIn it’s maybe 15 seconds before you move on. Thanks to scrolling technology on smart devices, people’s A.S.S. Time gets less and less, as more and more content is consciously ignored.

People have no choice – we are becoming time-poor, infobesity-ridden carbon-based life forms hooked by the dopamine effect of the next thing to appear on a screen.

Consequently the majority of content from content marketing, never ever gets seen, let alone read.

So this creates another paradox…

If you believe the content marketers, to practice influencer marketing, you must generate lots of followers and do lots of content marketing.

Following the obvious thread – if you have lots of followers and they are also posting, because they want to be thought leaders and do content marketing too, then by definition – nobody’s being influenced – because none of the content gets consumed, as we’re too busy creating thought leading marketing content for our influencer marketing.

And there’s still only 24 hours in the day to create and consume content.

Maybe “content marketing” should be renamed circumlocutious marketing?

Sadly the way we’re heading digitally, I suspect the whole marketing industry might get renamed the “mediocrity industry” – but that’s another blog…

Those two marketers walk into a bar and laugh at influencer marketing…

18 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, Thought Leadership

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It’s become a popular word – “influencer”. And now the term “influencer marketing” has entered the marketing vernacular, in case you need a new buzzword for a meeting.

It’s not really a new term though. In my school days when I was well behaved, a mother thanked me for being such a positive influence on her son. Then a few weeks later, a teacher called me out for being a disruptive influence in the class – it’s no wonder I’m cynical.

Influencer marketing is the process of contriving authenticity and false expertise by publishing content – most of which is not original – to grow a “following” online.

There are all sorts of tricks and guides to grow your alleged influence and the beauty is, you don’t need any real subject knowledge or track record of success in your field. You just need the ability to connect to people online and use marketing automation tools to publish content – mostly reworked from other alleged influencers, or borrowed from real experts (and usually without credit).

You can even outsource to content farms on the subcontinent or South America to create your expertise. If you’re a shrewd promoter, it’s not difficult to position yourself as an alleged expert.

Influencer marketers abide by what I call the Dory Principle of Marketing – “just keep bluffing, just keep bluffing – bluff, bluff, bluff.”

dory_just_keep_swimming

The Dory Principle of Marketing – just keep bluffing, repeat infinitum…

There’s rarely original thought published by these influencers. The real sad part is the volume of young marketers believing much of what is being peddled as expertise.

Some alleged “influencer marketing experts” have synthesized words to brand themselves with ridiculous titles such as Linkfluencer, or Social Influencer, as if this somehow casts magical wisdom upon their being – change hands please.

100208.influencer

With thanks to The Marketoonist

That’s not to say there aren’t some genuine experts using content to educate and further their reputation. But they do so with legitimate credentials and history of success, rather than trying to punch above their weight using implied knowledge and sheer volume of content.

Recently a British marketer Dan Bond, published his list of alternate marketing influencers (as against those who practice influencer marketing). This humble blog you’re reading is on the list, with some rather esteemed company.

All the writers have a bit of mongrel in them and are refreshingly honest, which is why I read their stuff as much as I can. Check out their blogs here.

And avagoodweegend…