You no doubt saw Mark Zuckerberg’s post last week about the changes he’s making in Facebook.
On January 11, he wrote:
One of our big focus areas for 2018 is making sure the time we all spend on Facebook is time well spent…. I’m changing the goal I give our product teams from focusing on helping you find relevant content to helping you have more meaningful social interactions.
Right now, I’m reading The ONE Thing, so I’m reading Mark’s words from that filter. And if you look closely, you’ll see the one focus Facebook is adopting this year.
It’s not relevant content, sadly. It’s time well spent.
So as content marketers and writers, we need to evaluate our content. Relevance is going to be less of an issue this year. Engagement is going to be everything.
With that in mind, I’m rethinking everything about the way we do content.
Content Marketing Is Entering a New Era
Over the past 5 years, our focus on content has been quality. Honestly, that’s as vague and open to interpretation as “relevance” or “time well spent.” But the idea was to stop creating content just to say you did it and, instead, to say something worth saying.
That worked for search engines too, so we were able to create long-form, in-depth content that ranked well in search, got shared in social media, and maybe even went viral.
With one format of content, we were able to accomplish multiple business goals: list building, traffic, engagement, and even driving sales.
But over the last year or so, results have been waning. Fewer subscriptions, less traffic, less engagement. Across the board, it’s been getting harder and harder to get results from content.
And that’s been true for everyone: big brands, small brands, and social platforms too. Content shock is a reality. People are unsubscribing and unplugging.
Which is where Facebook is coming from.
If people are overwhelmed by content, then prioritizing relevant content won’t keep people browsing their Facebook wall.
Get this: It won’t keep them browsing your blog either.
What people want are personal connections. They want to join in a conversation and be heard. They want to expand their connections and get to know people better.
So What’s a Content Marketer to Do?
That’s easy. Become less focused on business results and more focused on the people you serve.
If you want to rank in search, you’ll need to create some posts just for search marketing. But that content probably won’t build personal connections. So you’ll need to create separate content just for engaging and drawing in your target audience.
You’ll need to be more real, more human. Tell stories. Make fun of yourself. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
Talk like yourself, not some idealized version of yourself. Use more images, more videos, more live action, so people feel like they know you.
It’s in the “knowing” that you’ll earn followers. Not in outdoing everyone else with longer, more complicated, more impressive content.
Success will come from daring to be real.
So here’s my advice…
Every time you sit down to create a piece of content, ask yourself, “Will my audience feel like this is time well spent?”
If so, go for it. If not, start over. It’s not worth your time.
The content that gets traction this year won’t be long, in-depth, high-quality, or impressive. It might be more amateurish. It will likely be shorter, funnier, and more entertaining. It could also be shocking, eye-opening, or enlightening. But it will definitely be classified as time well spent.
Make that your goal, and your content will do well.
Ignore it at your peril.
