Is your content ready for the two internets?
or the internet version of The Battle of the Bastards
As a lot of people already said: “Content is king, but context is queen.”
Merriam-Webster defines context as:
“the situation in which something happens : the group of conditions that exist where and when something happens.”
In digital platforms, context is: a topic and its timing, platform (i.e., LinkedIn, website, Facebook, Twitter, etc), publishing time, the target audience.
But there’s a new battle for the throne when it comes to modern publishing on digital platforms:
There are two internets for content that work in very different ways — one is searchable, the other is social. One kingdom is ruled by Google — the other, by Facebook.
Unfortunately, the two don’t share a unified power.
If you’ve ever tried to search for a post from your Facebook newsfeed — and never found it — you’ve found the big Facebook gap: it’s a social network that sucks at search.
The Google internet (or open web) is powered by search and users look for content in some context defined by them and SEO tricks are the way content creators try to be findable or at least well ranked in the search engine results page.
The Facebook internet is closed, powered by ads and its users are fed by content creators via promoted content and other users’ shares and some “Dark (social) arts of targeted ads”.
So context-wise, we have two really different approaches to how each internet shows content to its users:
SEARCH: Users search for themes that are important to them in a particular time and situation or context. The only way to be ultra relevant is via content created and stored in a searchable website(or platform) so Content can be Context-ready.
SOCIAL: Content created is sent to users based on the context “built” via targeted audiences, tone, message and channel. So, users’ Context could be Content-ready.
In other words, the open web and its infinite content wait for user’s context via the search engine. While in closed social, the users wait for context to match the constant inflow of content in their newsfeed.
We usually deal with context in two ways:
Passive — when content leads to a sleeper context. For example, when you see a car ad and you are starting to think about buying a new car. This is basically how advertising works.
Active — when you actively search for options in a search engine or look for car sales ads in a newspaper and so on. Your context is making you look for the content.
And relevancy will appear when both content and context swiped right and the “it’s a match” sign blinks through your heart and brain confirming that this was what you’ve been looking for.
Today, the only way to actually do this is by writing context-ready content and adapting it for each different outlet that you may publish it.
So, if we consider every user click/interaction as a vote, a preference, then the context would be better designed if we had a reliable content search engine on a social media network.
But since the search in the closed internet doesn’t work that well (maybe due to privacy settings), the only way for us to reach the audiences we want and be somewhat relevant to them is by ultra-targeting strategies and segmentation. Associating it with cookies analysis of the user’s browsing habits, advertisers can emulate a context and its relevance.
In a world where ad-blockers usage is growing on a daily basis, writing content that is context-ready is vital.
But what is context-ready content?
It’s Content that…
- is searchable/findable
- is platform appropriate
- has the right tone according to the platform
- it is written in a way that helps the user and not the brand
- is shown as actual content and not advertising
- can be distributed through promoted content ads
- doesn’t show a typical call to action
- can be seen as a service
In order to work, you must have a searchable hub in the open web to host all content and have a smart distribution strategy for the social platforms too. So you can fish for user’s context in social media and wait for the user’s in the hub via a search engine.
Until now we don’t have a perfect experience where the user context is always in the center of the experience but there are a few things that you might adjust that might help.
Optimize your context-ready content with these tweaks:
- Smarter SEO. When preparing content that will be hosted on your content hub, build it in a way that is ready for users’ context by researching their behaviors, habits, interests and make this content SEO-ready too.
- Refine target audience profiles. When you’re trying to use this content in the closed social internet, you must change the tone of your content by building the context that is ready for the content you’re going to promote. You can do that by creating your targeted audiences based on patterns, online behaviors, big data.
- Consider hosted vs live solutions. Context-ready content will work better with hosted solutions than with live ones such as Snapchat chats (not the Stories part), Periscope, YouTube or Facebook Live. If the content is hosted and SEO it's also good, people in that context will find it.
- Remember that Live solutions are context oriented. The context in these cases would be the reason why the content creator is broadcasting its messages live. Users wouldn’t have to worry about context because they would probably be drowned in it. Even if you could re-live it during a reprise. Imagine a way to re-live the last episode of Game of Thrones and see all tweets as they happened in its first run. That’s it. “Live” context even when the content isn’t live anymore and you’re living in a simulation of a live experience but yet, embedded in context-ready content.
Until someone decides that it’s time to honor the Queen in some better way, we are forever doomed to produce content in this never-ending battle between these two internets.
