7 Rules for a Content Development Strategy — Will the Dark Side of Social Media’s “Attention Economy” eventually destroy Content?
Things to consider when creating a Social Media Content Development Strategy (these 7 fast and loose rules are interchangeable and I’ll keep hinting on a couple more in articles to come):
1- Some content will always fail. Question isn’t how you jump into the next piece of content and change it so it isn’t like the previous one but better, but rather, what was the inherent value of that content that made it “useless” for your audience.
2- The moment you start over-compensating and creating content just for the sake of creating content to see if one of them hits, without evaluating it as an holistic approach to the entire strategy — you’re literally seeing the tree for the forest (always remember your forest is the ultimate goal).
3- Stop trying to copy independent content creators without having knowledge of how their audience ticks & their content interacts with its viewers (money does not solve this issue, compressed time even less so).
4- Jumping on 3 — if you compress results into a 1 year schedule, that people who’ve been working in the industry have succeeded in achieving in a decade — but think that money will solve that issue… you’re gonna have a bad time.
5- Content is King, sure, but then if you scramble those eggs with Big Data & Social Media Insights, that king is going to very quickly be taken over by the bourgeoisie — as in… someone faster, cheaper & “better” at providing the same content will always take you over in the grand scheme of things (or in the viewer’s Social Wall).6- Always expect the appeal of your content to have a high value out of social media, as much as on social media. It is true that people jump on the bandwagon of sharing content they see others share (especially here in Singapore), but you also want the other 90% of your audience that saw your content that didn’t share it, to talk about it with their friends (the idea of real word of mouth is still truly by word & mouth rather than keyboard & screen) — it is that conversation amongst friends that will keep them coming back to the content you’re producing, not them sharing it on social.
7- The moment you create strict rules on the content you’re producing, the rest of the market will pass you by, so either make them integral to the content (and the brand) and don’t change until you’ve perfected the formula, or scrap a bad idea and invest in better content production (i know this is relative and data might be an easy fix but, if you’re in doubt, do a simple litmus test — ask the audience you have, even if small, what they like or don’t like about your content, instead of relying on the other 99% who probably didn’t even pass the first 3secs of what you showed them).
Now for a little bit of context to the above rules.
If you’re used to content creation, or storytelling on social media relevant content, you’d have noticed that I started the previous article with a “framing/frame story” or a framing device (you can reread it here if you’re one of those that are not frightened by the 11min read time sign at the top).
What is a frame story you might ask?
It’s pretty simple — a writer starts off a text/story/script/song/movie/piece of art, with an “allegorical analogy” that not only distills the topics that are going to be covered but, that at the same time (when the article is supposed to be a cold observation of reality, especially) portrays and frames — me, the writer — in a human, personable and possibly “reliable” way.
It’s a technique that has been taught for millennia to writers that has started to make its way into “speaking engagements”, “technical articles”, “ted talks”, what have you. Anyone that has ever been in a “speech 101 class” would attest to it.
It is the “storyfication of owned-speech”.
It is a story based way to frame a human bias in a way that it turns it on its head and makes the audience “turn off their bullsh*t detector” for a couple of seconds (if the framing is done right, of course) in a seemingly “cold” creation of empathy with the speaker before they start to relate their mindset and their indoctrination into what they’re saying, without you, the audience, having many defenses to call them out on their crap (which I wholeheartedly encourage you to call me out on, either through comments on our Bloomr platforms or through my own socials).
This “framing story” is deeply understood in the psychology realm, just known as something a bit more sinister: it is one of, a lot of extremely enjoyable to learn about, human cognitive biases — specifically called the “framing effect” bias.
What that framing effect bias creates (inadvertently I might add) — is literally hook you the audience, into “staying for the rest of the article”… it’s the gun in the beginning of a film, that you know will be used later in it to kill the baddie…
The framing bias, like a lot of these human evolution biases, is fantastic.
From my perspective, biases, human psychology, story & history as well as some basic human needs are the basis of any and all content that can be even just a little bit watched as possibly triggering empathy (and a connection) with an audience (some content creators still believe it’s the actor or the story beats though — if you’re one of those, please explain to me how that works in the comments).
So… let me jump on this particular “framing” device (and how it connects to the theme of the article, of course)…
In programming an algorithm (for Social Media especially), a big factor that goes into it is — human cognitive biases.
All of them. And of course — how to fight them.
They are programmed so that when we scroll through our FB/TW/IG/YT walls, every single one of those biases doesn’t make us not watch the content in front of us.
Why do I bring up this particular bias bearing in mind we’re supposed to be talking about social media and its impact on content?
… Have you seen Moneyball?
The 2011 film that talks about Billy Beane’s “revolution” in sport by introducing Big Data Analytics into the set up and management of the perfect baseball team (the Oakland A’s)?
There’s a scene in the film (you can see it below) that is representative of a mindset that has besieged the world of content development — but that everyone seems to not want to really talk about (there goes the other half of the reading audience).
There are Big Content Development players in the industry, there’s 100 feet of crap, and then there’s everyone else (think = single content creators)…
How did we get to this stage of the storytelling universe of new media?
Big Data & Social Media Insights and our framing of what a Content Development Strategy really is.
But there’s a clear difference in mindset in the media/content industry compared to what is spoken in Moneyball.
Big Data used in baseball algorithms is “fair” and has a lot of statistical rigor (being constantly updated and calibrated each game).
Social Media Insights (& Big Data Analytics) in the world of Content Development (read — corporate/big media/what have you) is vague, highly controlled, commodified, psychologically controversial and extremely distorted to serve the objectives of each and everyone that produces it (let’s not even start on the amounts of bad bad bad Big Data that is currently floating the interwebs).
“Yeah… sure Diogo… coming from you especially, saying insights, data and backend studies are destroying the way people create and frame content is rich”.
Yep — I totally understand how stupid this sounds. But let me dig my hole a little deeper to see if you see some light at the end of it.
Most data analysts / programmers / algorithmic mavens create content in a binary way (by nature of the platforms they’re working for) and some, if not all — make sure that a piece of content that isn’t seen or engaged with, disappears from the ether.
It isn’t math, it isn’t science — it’s human nature (or by now — machine controlled/programmed human interactive nature).
If it isn’t in front of you (another great cognitive bias — the availability one), it shouldn’t exist.
So, a piece of content that isn’t watched, that isn’t interacted with, that is left 3mins in (even though it is 30mins long), an image that has a 20% lower rate of interaction = become dead content.
Mind you, this is not the Sh*t Content I talked about in the previous write-up but — literally dead (useless) content. Content that totally wasn’t watched by anyone on Social (or watched by an “enough or impactful number” of audience members).
What is then seen as the solution usually (the basis of any strategy that sees a wrench in their path)?
You remodel, recreate, restrategize, rebuild the previous piece of content to interact/engage and satisfy the audience even better so next time they consume it without a hitch (if you’re really low on resources — you might even just repackage the thumbnail of said content to see if anything happens).
This is the crux of “modern” Content Development strategies.
The reality that every content creator has to face — the audience is king.
The engagement is king.
The viewership (and everything else) is what demands the content to be created, not the content to be created to eventually find its audience (eg. the existence of The Greatest Showman last year, and several sleeper hits around the world, with their huge long-tail effects on the culture and their creators’ bottom-lines, all that didn’t have an audience when they came out).
And so the content is transmuted into a “frankenstein monster” of content — just so it keeps fighting the algorithms that push it down (and it “hooks your audience to watch it”).
Do you see how self serving this type of strategy is?
The small content creators that are out there (that some big players can’t understand how they’re so effective at fighting their audience for attention with 1000x less money invested) have perfected their content by giving their audience what they want, but they did it over stretches of time, while creating an emotional/communal and dependent relationship with their audience.
The moment a corporation develops their strategy focusing solely on your insights/big data analysis at scale and without time to “breathe/grow” — either you’ll alienate your audience or your content will probably, not be registered as it’ll just look like the same thing everyone else is doing (a diff level of Sh*t…).
It is said that when Marie-Antoinette was faced with the reality that her French subjects didn’t have enough bread to survive — she retorted “let them eat cake!” (this is one of those lingering myths that persist in modern culture as it has never been 100% proven).
So… if you’re building a Content Development Strategy (and you’re focusing too much on your Insights and Big Data Analytics) be sure to first, re-frame your knowledge and bias — but ultimately, stop giving your audience = cake.
Otherwise, you’ll eventually have legions of (psychologically) diabetic zombies watching your content (or if the data is to be believed — legions and legions of bots). I know sometimes this can be a contradictory illusion to keep in mind when developing your content, but not always does the commodification & industrialization of a consumed product a better consumer makes.
BTW… leave it to a 30something that has always focused on production, to tell a 40/50something in management, what an audience of 20somethings want to watch… if that doesn’t demonstrate how disconnected the current commissioning & production process (and content development universe) is from the real onus of the Content Strategy conversation, I don’t know what is.
Check out some of our previous Bloomr.SG articles on Social Media & Content Development below:
1 — Why Social Media Matters
2 — The Art of Social Listening For Personalization
3 — “Hello, I will be your personal server this morning!” — iPad in a café
4 — Understanding Community Management
5–5 Tips to growing your Instagram account
6 — New to Influencer Marketing? Read On
7 — “Less is More” — Social Media Strategy
8 — Digital Consumerism in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
9 — Top Content in February by Platforms
