My friend (and friend of Creative Fierce) Hashim Warren mentioned on LinkedIn recently that we recently saw the tenth anniversary of “content shock.”
Content Shock was a term coined by Mark Schaefer to talk about the glut of low-value content that was flooding the web.
By his calculation, more hours of content were being generated than there were available human hours to read, watch, or listen.
This was a sort of “Schrödinger’s Business Crisis.”
In other words, it was a problem .. and also it wasn’t a problem.
I wrote a maybe-snarky-seeming response to it at the time, which I hope Mark isn’t too mad at me about.
You can check that out here: Surviving ‘Content Shock’ and the impending content marketing collapse
Reading those posts today, they feel kind of quaint.
“Oh, these people think the volume is overwhelming? That’s adorable.”
(I want to be clear — that was absolutely what Shaefer was warning us about: that it was only going to get much, much worse.)
I said it in 2014 and I’ll say it again now.
In fact, check back with me in 2034, because I’m pretty sure I’ll be saying it then, too.
… We are a long way from the day when too much high-quality content is being created.
Back in 2014, I identified five content creators who were making the kind of genuinely useful and also genuinely strategic content that had enduring business value.
Those content creators were Paula Begoun, Examine,com, Jeff Campbell, Marcus Sheridan, and Brian Goulet.
So how was my crystal ball?
- Paula Begoun’s facts-first, science-informed cosmetics company has expanded to serve global markets.
- Examine’s nutrition information business is stronger than ever, despite refusing all ads or sponsorships and “competing with” a nearly infinite volume of popular misinformation.
- Jeff Campbell sold his cleaning supply business, The Clean Team, and they’re still going strong — and still selling the books he wrote 30 years ago.
- I don’t have any inside scoop on how Marcus Sheridan’s pool experiment went. The company, River Pools, looks like it is doing well, but I don’t have a good way to peek behind the curtain.
- Brian and Rachel Goulet’s pen, ink, and stationery business stayed strong through tough pandemic challenges, and retains its massively loyal audience of buyers — even though these days they’re increasingly competing with Amazon
What I think makes it work
You might think I’m going to tell you “stay consistent for ten years” as the secret for making it work.
But most of these examples hadn’t been publishing for ten years when I selected them.
You absolutely do not need to publish “selflessly” for years or decades and wait for your content to drive business results. In fact, please don’t do that.
I think their content worked because they:
- Insisted on content usefulness before any other metric
- Consistently aligned — and realigned — their content strategy to serve business needs
- Built a “walled garden” against the noise of misinformation
Begoun is in the cosmetics industry — notorious for misinformation, marketing gibberish, and just plain corporate lies.
Examine covers nutrition — a topic that I would argue wins first prize as the pinnacle of bullshit mountain.
Campbell approached a well-worn topic — cleaning your house — with a new approach: “Here’s the efficient, speedy method that the best professional house cleaners use.”
(HIs book Speed Cleaning is still awesome, even though you can get tens of thousands of hours of cleaning content on YouTube.)
Sheridan’s approach with River Pools was to focus relentlessly on real customer questions. His approach was fast to create … and so straightforward it could have been in an episode of The Flintstones. And for a lot of topics, it’s still an excellent foundation to build on.
Goulet Pens lives in a more niche topic. Their content environment was a messy mix of forum posts, niche blogs, and a handful of other retailers. It’s also (still) full of weirdly passionate hot takes. (You cannot believe how mad people get about fountain pen ink. You really can’t.)
And — starting with straightforward reviews and good website design — they built out an easy-to-navigate resource that will answer just about any question you might have about fountain pens.
(Goulet is a textbook flagship authority site. Like, if I wrote a textbook, there would be a chapter on what they did and how they did it.)
These are five very different creators. But they all took a cluttered content environment and created a curated, walled-in space with nothing but good stuff.
Some of them still create ongoing content, and some are cheerfully coasting on a few excellent resources and riding that authority.
If you find yourself getting bummed out by the volume of junk that’s competing for attention with your good work (or for your clients) — start by building that walled garden.
(If you struggle to know what should be inside that garden, the VESPA content framework is a good place to start.)
Start building from there. Prioritize useful, relevant, and human resources that will help your audience get the things they want. And organize them in a way that’s easy to find.
When you start from your walled garden and build out, everything else gets about a zillion times easier.
Photo by Nicolas Lysandrou on Unsplash
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