Choking on Content: Finding the Right Balance Personally and For Your Customers

Content is the marketing plan

If you own a smart phone or have had contact with the modern world the last decade, you know feeling “content” has taken a back seat to consuming “content” – all the information, on all the apps, all the time.

Ten years ago, content was the new marketing kid on the block, and no one was sure how to integrate it into marketing plans. Fast forward, it’s a fine-oiled machine. Businesses are built on it. COVID prioritized it. It basically is the marketing plan, and now there’s AI to dial it into a needle-sharp point, like a personally curated, continual tsunami of information that all seems relevant, urgent and important.

It worked on me

Post my athleisurewear lockdown era, I’ve taken action to improve my style and fashion sense. One mention of this goal into cyber space and retailers said, “Hold my beer!”

I’ve suddenly found myself with too many ads that are spot on and FOMO on the latest piece of clothing arriving weekly (weekly!). Now the problem isn’t that I can’t find anything that fits or looks good, it’s that, after watching hours of content, everything seems to work. I’ve watched enough videos to learn how to put outfits together, and retailers now know enough about me to design clothes that flatter my cheese-eating body. I’m suddenly a Midwest Ann Hathaway at the end of Devil Wears Prada.

Jonesing for the crystal skull

There can be too much of a good thing. How much style do I really need? Remember when Cate Blanchett finally puts the crystal skull on the alien body in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? She exclaims, “I want to know everything!” Then her head basically explodes, and she’s sucked into outer space as all the knowledge of the universe is beamed into her brain. Was George Lucas, et al, a harbinger of content overload? How do we keep our heads from exploding?

Be your own gatekeeper

If you were a forest baby, you would know nothing about social media. You’d forage and find food and shelter, make friends with animals and have no worries about skin hydration or Britain’s royal family or whether politicians paid for weird sexual encounters. You’d be focused on what you need to survive and thrive on your own terms.

The pressure to depressurize is growing. The idea of a simpler time has made everyone want to own chickens. It’s also made me look at my own content over-consumption.

We can control where we land on the spectrum between no-information forest baby and content addict. It takes discipline and detox to not constantly touch the crystal skull.

Here’s what I’ve been trying:

1. Batch notifications – iPhone Settings allows you to batch notifications on a schedule. I’ve set mine up to send me a summary twice per day. You can select which apps get to alert you in real-time and which ones you look at in a summary at the times of your choosing. Game. Changer. I’ve learned what I do and don’t need to see. I’ve reduced distractions, it’s faster and more fun to read the notifications in a summary and I’m in control!
2. Use content as a reward for completing a task or habit-stacking helper – The ol’ delayed gratification method. Enjoying your favorite content can be a carrot for completing things. Similarly, James Clear taught us about habit-stacking, when you combine two activities – one you like and one you like less – to have the motivation to complete the less fun one. Content plus housework equals less crappy.
3. Select healthy content – Not everything is worth your time. You get to decide. Be brave and honest with yourself and set boundaries on what truly brings value to your day (like the water-filling bottle game!). Take out the trash. You are worth it!
4. Meditation and observation – Hone the ability to put emotional distance between you and your stressors/anxiety binders/distractions. Meditation and conscious awareness of my engagement with content has helped me to greatly reduce anxiety. Things like digital dings and other people’s issues create unnecessary, artificial anxiety that don’t deserve my energy.

Content and Customers

This is all great personally, but it’s my job to market to people with content. If people are overloaded with relevant (and irrelevant) content, what does this mean to marketers?

1. Meet customers in their preferred format. LinkedIn articles say videos get 20 times the views as written content. This explains the rise of YouTube, TikTok and video content on Facebook and Instagram. People also like to watch at accelerated speeds and with captions on. Subscribing to a streaming service allows people to batch content, both video and podcasts for when the time is right for them. Instead of constantly scrolling and hoping to find something interesting, customers can go right to the content.
2. Simplify channel management. There are several tools to help disseminate information to multiple channels at once, such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social. These tools allow you to spread the word, schedule posts (batch!) and improve SEO by broadening your reach.
3. Communication is a two-way street. Don’t push content without understanding customer needs. Just because you think something is cool doesn’t mean it matters to your customer.
4. Goldilocks posting - Did you know you can get “punished” by the algorithms for posting too much content? You want to find a cadence that’s “just right.” Quality over quantity. Consistency and relevancy. Be helpful, be real, be aware of how you make people feel, because people remember how you make them feel, and customers are people, too.

Content Contentment

Do yourself a favor and right-size your content consumption; no one needs the crystal skull. If you’re creating content, you’re not alone; every other business is fishing with content. Avoid fatigue and stand out with a two-sided content plan that prioritizes customer needs. And remember, it’s OK to read notifications a few hours after they arrive, and you will survive if you don’t watch every cat video.

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