Are You Sick of Hearing About Content Marketing?

I read an article by Justin Pearse from Bite in the U.K and he wrote some compelling thoughts on the subject of Content Marketing and it made me reflect on the buzz that was around social media 4 years ago. Is Content Marketing the next wave or has it always been there since Social Media began or are we just trendoids and latching onto buzz terms for the sake of it?

In this video, Andrew Radics and Ian Hopkinson discuss some of the buzz terms that have been overused in the digital arena.

 

 

Transcript:

Ian: Are you sick of hearing about content marketing? You might be if you heard our content marketing broadcast last week. I actually thought this might be a good one to talk about, because it does get annoying the amount of times words get over used. Buzz terms, you know, those trendy type words get used and people get sick of hearing them, and it takes the whole point out of the importance of these things.

Andrew: Not only that, people can be a bit confused about what exactly these certain terms mean.

Ian: Yeah, thats a good point. I mean, as I mentioned in the description Justin Pearce (sorry Justin if I’ve read your name wrong) wrote a great article. Justin’s from Bright 1:15 in the UK and wrote a great article about this and he said, that every conference you go to depending what stage we’re at with with a lot of this digital marketing, whatever the buzz term is and at this point in time it’s content marketing, it just keeps getting hammered. Every keynote that you walk into it’s sort of content marketing, content marketing! But content marketing has really been around for a long time, and it’s actually something that was instrumental in the emergence of social media. So, it’s just kind of another form of social media that’s being highlighted because everything else was kind of, everybody kind of got burnt out on hearing the word social media. Essentially I think it’s that it’s the natural progression…

Andrew: Yes, and everybody seems to have become a social media expert just because they know how to put a post on Facebook or Twitter and most people think of social media as being just Facebook and Twitter.

Ian: Well they do and in fact, yeah, social media is actually anything that starts conversation, sorry anything that allows for conversation and it’s ever expanding. If you see how much is actually involved in social media, it’s quite crazy. The fact that we’re actually able to broadcast live and talk to you right now, that in itself is social media even though you haven’t actually replied yet, this is a form of social media. Of course the added bonus is it’s got conversation tools attached to it, Google+ sort of obviously being the ultimate in that sense. So I think it’s a shame in a way that these terms get burnt out, and some of them get so burnt out they can’t really be brought back.

Andrew: Some of them with good reason.

Ian: Now you’ve got interestingly enough, there’s a top sort of 50 of the business buzzwords of the last year, what were the top ones there?

Andrew: The top one. Number one, surprise surprise – “content.” And surprise surprise number two is – “social media.”

Ian: Oh well you see there you go. So content and social media have even topped the top 50, they’ve topped the top. That’s really high up. And of the business buzzwords.

Andrew: Yeah. Just some of the other ones that we hear all the time. “Out of the box.” “Deliverable.”

Ian: Deliverable? Oh what are the deliverables, yes?

Andrew: One of my favourites, “110%.” I mean that’s just ludicrous in itself isn’t it?

Ian: Yes.

Andrew:  Anyway, “multitask.” “Rocket science. “

Ian: How many times do you hear people say that? It’s not rocket science.

Andrew: Here’s a good one, “in the cloud.”  That’s a major buzzword, even today, everything is in the cloud. One of the ones I really really dislike, “value add.”

Ian: Value add, yeah.

Andrew: We value, we give you value added services… “Glass is half full.” “Facetime.” Thanks to Apple that’s what we’ve got today. “Brain surgery.”

Ian: That’s right up there with rocket science.

Andrew: Yep. “Bleeding Edge.” “Quick and dirty.” Yep alright I haven’t heard of that one.

Ian: No, bleeding edge or cutting edge we get a lot of.

Andrew: “Let’s touch base.” “Herding cats.” And here’s one that I hear…

Ian: Herding cats? I use herding cats a lot, I didn’t realise that was one of the top ones, I’ll have to stop, I’ll have to tone that down.

Andrew: Well, here’s one you really need to tone down I think, I hear this all the time from you. “Low hanging fruit.”  Let’s go after the low hanging fruit.

Ian: I do say that a lot don’t I?

Andrew: You do. I mean I know the point, it gets the point across, but we’re talking about buzzwords that are overkill, that’s one of them.

Ian: Yeah. Well I mean, in essence why I wanted to bring this up is that digital marketing terminology is ever changing, as is the terminology in our businesses and across lots of other sectors. But the fundamentals remain, lets keep that in mind as these trending terms burn in and out of existence because the fundamentals are that your customers want to hear compelling stories, they don’t want to be oversold to, and the way to do that is to actually engage them with good content. So no matter what you call that content, and how much you use the word content marketing, all various different forms of social media. And “microblogging,” that was one of my favourites…

Andrew: Yeah, yeah it was.

Ian: …from yesteryear, was when people used to say “no that fits into the microblogging category.”  Ok, what is that? Twitter basically? Oh right, so short forms or snippets of information. So don’t get bogged down in terms, don’t get caught up. I know that in another couple of weeks I’m speaking to the Glaciers Association of Victoria and they’re sort or saying to me I think the topic should be Social Media – Friend or Foe? So, obviously being asked to speak about that and focus on the topic and have it phrased that way, people are already sick of hearing the term social media. So I suppose what I’ve get across to people is that do we actually really know what social media is? Because you might actually surprised as to the ever expanding area that it is. And yeah, lets not let the terminology spoil how it can actually help us promote our businesses online.

Andrew: Yep, couldn’t agree more.

Ian: There it is, short and sweet.

Andrew: Yep, oh and we did forget to mention, we’ve got a new wine of choice. It’s actually orange, you can’t see that close up.

Ian: It’s quite lovely actually. It’s a nice drop, it looks like a Rose only with a twist.

Andrew: So this is our drink of choice for the week.

Ian: A twist of something I don’t know.

Andrew: Let’s toast to the week, cheers.

Ian: Questions about anything really, fire away. Notice we didn’t take a sip, for health reasons. Fire away, whether its about social media, content marketing, SEO, any area of digital marketing You can ask ask just about anything, animals. You know, what do I feed my cat?

Andrew: You can ask if he’s single or not.

Ian: No, no, no we’re not going there. No dating.

Andrew: Internet dating, come on!

Ian: No dating questions.

Andrew: This is social media.

Ian: However, that’s actually, that will be a topic that would be good to cover at some point.

Andrew: What, internet dating?

Ian: Internet dating, yeah. Does it work? Dating apps, does it work. Has someone found love out there and has it worked for them? Because, to me that’s kind of an interesting thing because I’ve never done that before and don’t even think I ever will. But these ways that we connect with each other, they’re a little bit different and they do work for people.

Andrew: They do.

Ian: So there you go, you might have opened up a whole can of worms there.

Andrew: Yeah…

Ian: Maybe you can call in sick on that day?

Andrew: No I don’t have to call in sick, I just don’t turn up at all. I don’t have to tell anyone.

Ian: Well actually if we’re going to do that one we’ll have a special guest, we’ll have someone in who’s got experience with internet dating, that could be interesting.

Andrew: Could be, couldn’t it?

Ian: Could be, and it could be really terrible too.

Andrew: Yeah, alright.

Ian: And thanks for that suggestion, but.. All the best, we’ll see you very soon. Coming up we’re going to be talking about all sorts of things, but LinkedIn is one of them, and I’m looking forward to that I think it’s going to be very entertaining. Maybe it will be not for you, but it will be for us, we’ll be laughing a lot.

Andrew: We have a good laugh.

Ian: Alrighty, speak soon.

Andrew: Bye.