This past week, MarketingProfs, in collaboration with the Content Marketing Institute, release a report called B2B Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America. The report represents two very particular, very important trends that I find extremely disturbing in the online world today, so with respect and no bashing, I want to talk about this report a little bit and tell you what bothers me about it.

First, some background. It’s hard to go to any blog site these days without encountering a post about content marketing. More than Pinterest even, content marketing has grabbed the hearts and minds of social media practitioners. In fact, content marketing has become such a focus that it has continued the trend of marketers drowning out anything that is NOT content marketing. Content marketing, if you read most of these blog posts, is just about shoveling out stories and using those stories for your blog, your Facebook page, your e-newsletter, and more. If you are not doing content marketing right now, it seems to be insinuated that you are really missing the boat.

The first few slides of the report seem to support the fact that content marketing is an increasingly powerful tool in the B2B world. The first slide notes that 91% of marketers polled are doing some kind of content marketing. The fifth slide shows that 87% of marketers polled use social media while only 3% use “content marketing” in print. A few slides deeper and you find out that 54% of marketers polled plan to increase their content marketing over the next year. This all looks pretty good for the content marketing fan club.

However, when you get to slide 19 out of the 23 total slides, you find something quite shocking. Of the marketers polled, only 36% felt they were using content marketing effectively. To me, this should be the headline of the study, and it certainly adds a different aura to the information already cited. Marketers want to invest more time and money into content marketing but they aren’t sure that what they’re doing now is working? Marketers want to continue to increase usage of social media to distribute content marketing, but they aren’t sure their content is good?

What is going on here? To me, this seems like a breaking news problem.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would say that these marketers probably read a lot of the same blogs I do. They read about how stories regarding their company, their corporate leadership, their products, and more would entice customers to get to know them better. They listened to the folks who said that content marketing is about relationships and how it’s not transactional. I would guess that these marketers felt the urgency of jumping into content marketing and just started writing without any plan as to how best to distribute that content. Maybe these marketers started blogging but aren’t getting a lot of comments or shares because they are writing about things that their audience doesn’t care about. Just like social media, I would hypothesize that these marketers heard that content marketing was the big new thing and they jumped into the swift tides without a plan or a life jacket.

This brings me to my other concern about the report. There is no mention, really, of integrating content marketing as a tactic into anything else. Interestingly, it is noted that marketers found in-person events most credible – that would be trade shows and conferences among other things. Social Media may supplement those events but it is not the core of the issue. There is no talk about how increasing an investment in a tactic you aren’t good at may impact you negatively if you are leaving behind things that have worked. There is no indication that the marketers were asked if they were integrating their social media/content marketing efforts into other areas of their marketing campaign. It’s all content marketing, all the time. Again, this is all the more disturbing if over 70% of marketers polled feel they’re not even doing content marketing well.

Writing good content has ALWAYS been important to marketers. Marketing master David Ogilvy was all about content. In fact, he developed ads that looked more like editorial pieces because they were so full of content. Case studies, press releases, radio spots – all of those have depended on strong content. If the content was not strong, the effort would fail. Nothing has changed but where content is placed and how it is approached. You still need to figure out what kind of marketing materials are most likely to attract future customers. You still need to figure out what kind of content they like. While talking about storytelling is popular these days, some companies may find that their customers find that sort of content too fluffy. They want “how to” hard information. Conversely, perhaps you are providing solid “how to” information when your audience really wants to see a more human side of your company.

You MUST do the work. You MUST have a plan. And you should not be wishy-washy about whether what you are doing is working or not. Slapping blog posts onto a site and then sharing those posts via Facebook and Twitter is not a strategy. It will not work unless you plan it out, and you will not know it’s working for you unless you have a methodology for tracking it.

I know it is tempting to jump on to whatever the hot topic is amongst social media practitioners. A few months ago it was Pinterest. It’s been content marketing for awhile now. If you can’t do it effectively, whatever it is, do NOT do it. Either ask for help or stick to what does work for you. Just because content marketing is a social media darling does not mean your company will shrivel up without it. It does not mean it’s a perfect match for you. You must be the advocate for your own company. Do not throw money at whatever the bloggy tides tell you is hot now.

Make sense?

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A couple months ago, I experimented with social media by simply “listening” for a day. I didn’t post anything, but I scrolled through my Facebook feed and my Twitter stream like I regularly do. Listening without the expected next action of responding or liking or sharing takes you out of the equation and lets you view the content you are seeing with a different perspective. What I saw was rather shocking. Overwhelmingly, there was a great negative pall over my online reality.  Most common was the update or tweet that offered up a complaint about something. Politicians were a common target. The government was a common target. The state of the world as seen through an individual’s perspective was of course also present.  In stepping back, I of course realized I’m just as guilty of contributing to that smoggy cloud as anyone. I lament the state of the world. I lament that there are genocides going on that nobody seems to care about. I lament that people are more concerned about the next iPhone than they are about the shaky economic forecasts gathering for 2013.

Humans, as a rule, like to feel better when they don’t feel good. This traces back to our childhood. When you fell down you went to your mommy because you knew she’d make it better. When you are stressed about your job, you go running or eat a tub of ice cream, or both, because you know it will make you feel better. But I discovered another interesting thing as I listened for a day. People who complain on social media platforms don’t seem to want to be comforted. We want to complain. We want our complaints to be validated by likes or retweets. We want to stir up the fire but we don’t want to put the fire out.

After viewing the negativity that surrounds my online presence, I decided to try to make a conscientious effort to turn potential negatives into positives. To me, it seems like we most often identify social media as a voice amplifier. If we have a complaint, we can reach a lot more people with it thanks to social media platforms. But in thinking about it, social media can be a lot more than that. Social Media, if we let it, can be an action amplifier. It can be the spark that lights a fire of positive change instead of a fire of negativity that creates a lot of choke-inducing smoke. If there is something you are unhappy about, social media offers you an unprecedented opportunity to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

There are countless examples of people who have started to use social media to create positive change. Mark Horvath’s InvisiblePeople.TV is a fantastic example of this. The power of social media enables Mark to give a voice to the homeless of our country. Scott Stratten used social media in the #tutusforTanner effort a few years ago because he didn’t like that a family was struggling to fulfill their boy’s desperate last wish. He could have just written up a blog post about it or lamented the situation on Facebook. Instead, he did something about it. Dan Perez uses social media to share his videos to raise awareness, his latest effort being a focus on kids struggling with Dravet Syndrome. Razoo uses the power of social media integrated with offline efforts and in doing so, they have helped raise millions of dollars for causes across the country.

The list goes on.

Sadly, the majority of the people who complain the most and the loudest seldom participate in these kinds of efforts. However, if enough people shift the focus from “I can complain” to “I can change this,” I think everyone will eventually be swept into the tide, and those that staunchly refuse will increasingly be seen as people who simply want to be miserable.

We live in tumultuous times. Complaining is easy, especially with social media and technology advancing like they are. Fighting with people we may never have to meet in real life is one way we can choose to spend our time. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather reign in the power of this new means of communication and use it to improve the things that need to improve.

What do you say? Are you in?

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A couple of weeks ago, I participated in my first ever G+ hang-out. I know I haven’t been the most ardent supporter of Google Plus – some of the rather sexist articles that came out when Google Plus was in beta soured me on the platform a bit. The busy stream and other facets of G+ world never have gotten me too excited. However, the hang-outs are pretty neat. Much like Skype, the hangouts offer you a chance to talk to people face-to-face. Unlike Skype, it’s possible to talk (with ease) to a lot of different people (up to 9 others). No matter where they are or where you are, hanging out is as easy as a click of a button.

I found myself on kind of an endorphin high after my first hang-out experience. In fact, Brian Vickery and I created a new multi-platform show out of the deal. Talking to people with actual voices and faces and mouths that moved was so wonderful. Going back to the 2-D world of Facebook and Twitter seemed like kind of a let-down after that. Everyone was back to looking the way they always look when I see their avatars. There was no laughter, no tonality to anything that was being said.

Kaarina Dillabough and I will be offering deeper thoughts on this in a couple of weeks, but it seems like people are kind of getting restless with social media. In fact, Marcus Sheridan just wrote a post about how valuable social media conferences are because (ironically) they assist in connecting you to people face-to-face, in “real life.”

This all has to do with the personal nature of our lives and our dealings with other people. But I’m also wondering if perhaps we are moving away from the time when social media was a business in and of itself. I’m wondering if social media is evolving into something that is no longer a “thang.” You know what I mean? It’s no longer newsworthy in and of itself. It’s moving to a place where it’s no longer the whole story, it’s just a footnote. What could that mean for you, for me, and for all those people whose careers have been made by the social media thang?

It never should have been a “thang”

You might recall the “Social Media Revolution” videos that have been floating around YouTube for awhile now. It was hard not to get sucked into that mentality even two years ago. Facebook, Twitter, the potential for new kinds of communication – all of this was still new. But from the beginning, there have been voices cautioning against the “social media thang.” Take, for example, this presentation by Olivier Blanchard from 2010 – “Your business isn’t social media” is a point that is reiterated often in the talk. And that was from two years ago. More recently, Mike McGrail wrote a post suggesting that the age of the social media guru is coming to an end. Just today I read an article from AdWeek asking if social media community managers are really marketers. People are no longer buying into the aura of social media as a revolutionary concept. People want accountability. People want to get back to their real businesses.

What does this mean?

I’ve never been one to play the prediction game before, but in this case, I have a few guesses as to what is going to happen in the next few months to a year as a result of these trends.

The game will get uglier: As the value of a “social media guru” subsides, I think competition is going to drive a lot of the communication online to an increasingly ugly place. There will be increased supply versus decreasing demand. As people work to maintain the status they have built over the last five or so years in the online space, they will become more defensive, more prone to making broad generalizations, and more apt to dismiss people who disagree with them. There will be more “call-out” posts to undermine the competition, too.

Streams will quiet down: As people engross themselves in business versus social media, Facebook streams, blog communities, and Twitter feeds will slow to a crawl. I think a lot of us are already seeing this happen. This blog here is a prime example. I’ve barely blogged here for about two months. I just don’t have the time anymore.

Conversations will mature: Sound bites about ROI having to do with your mother will no longer be acceptable, which is the point Mike makes in his post. As social media changes from a “thang” to a tool, people will want more serious advice about how to use social media, how to measure social media efforts, and how to pivot if something either does not work or works better than expected.

The gurus will disappear: Blogs focusing only on social media best practices will die out, and it will seem sudden to those of us who have been in this space for any amount of time. People will no longer want to focus solely on how to get retweets. They’ll want to know how to use Twitter as part of an integrated marketing plan with a goal of increasing sales by 3%.

“Tradition” will make a come-back: There has been a lot of talk in the online world about how this or that thing is dead. Advertising, email, direct mail, the press release – almost anything NOT social media has been consigned to death at least once, right? As the shine evaporates on social media, people will begin to realize that some of those “traditional” marketing tactics weren’t so bad. In fact, we can now revisit those ideas in new and exciting ways that weren’t possible five years ago. Advertising, PR, and other marketing methods can be enriched and made more interactive with social media. They do not need to be replaced by social media. As we all long for handwritten notes and face-to-face connections, so too will companies begin to long for ways to actually market their products versus simply “engaging” with people.

I have seen many signs pointing to these changes. Some subtle, like gentle whispers on a windy night. Some less subtle. But I think we are most decidedly moving in a direction that will take us away from social media as a “thang.”

What do you think?

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Have you ever watched Ken Burns’ The West? There’s a story in there about a fellow named William Swain. William was a teacher and a peach farmer, and as the historians say, he had what would have been considered a very comfortable existence. He wasn’t famous or super wealthy, but his life was comfortable and stable. All of that changed, though, when the gold rush started in California. Suddenly you could get rich just by putting your spoon into a river. For William Swain, his comfortable life now seemed substantially more boring and less comfortable. Young men around the country started to dream about what that extra money could get them, and that was in addition to all of the adventure tied to heading all the way over to California. Suddenly good enough was NOT good enough.

To be 100% honest, the world of social media often brings William Swain to mind. Indeed, I rather much empathize with his state of mind. My life is extremely comfortable. I’m not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. My life is comfortable and stable. But the longer I stick around in the online world, the more feeble my life seems to feel. Factually, many people in the online world seem to be wealthy, or at the very least they post that way. If I didn’t read the news and only got my sense of the world from what I saw on Facebook and Twitter, I’d be apt to think there was no great recession. It seems that people are always eating out at fancy restaurants, going on 2-week vacations, going to conferences, buying additional houses…there is not much talk about money pressure in these parts.

But it’s not the updates that make social media feel increasingly like an exclusive club. It’s the almost palpable sentiment that if you don’t live your life like a wealthy person, you’re probably a coward. Take, for example, one of my particular hot buttons – that whole, “Don’t be afraid to fail” thing. People blog and tweet and Facebook about failure as if there are no consequences. Go tell your boss what your terms are. If you get fired, hey, that’s okay. Go leave work and the online world for 2 months. If things fall apart, hey, who cares. You have a great experience to look back on.

To me, and feel free to argue with me here, this is the perspective of a person who doesn’t have to face a lot of real-world consequences. If you are wealthy, losing your job may be okay. You can float on by for awhile. Maybe a long while. If you want to start your own company, the obstacles before you aren’t as monumental. If a family member suffers a major health crisis, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to cover it. You will face some consequences, but they are of a different nature than someone who doesn’t have a lot of expendable income.

It seems like a lot of people in the online world have a Nike “Just do it” attitude. If you want to change jobs, do it. If you want to move somewhere else, do it. If you want to travel a lot, just do it. There’s a tint to these kinds of statements that almost hinges on bullying. “If you don’t do this you’re giving up on life. You’re a coward.”

Or, possibly, you don’t want to go into brain-numbing debt?

Is Social Media Rigged for the Wealthy?

The more I have thought about this, the more I begin to wonder if the “social media game” is really rigged so that only the wealthy can truly succeed. For example, there’s this overriding thought that in order to start really getting your star to rise, you need to “be seen.” The best way to do this is to go to a lot of social media conferences, right? Let’s take SXSW Interactive in Austin, which sort of gets the social media conference season going. The badge just for the show is $950. That does not include (to the best of my knowledge) any transportation within the city of Austin. I don’t think that includes your hotel stay. It doesn’t include travel. That’s for one conference. Just one.

For someone who is leading a comfortable but not money-filled life, this single expenditure would be a challenge. If getting seen is part of what helps you climb the ranks in the social media world, how can a person who is not wealthy start to make an impact? Can you compete with in-person relationships if most people will never meet you in real life? Maybe, but I would posit that the odds are stacked against you.

So, now it’s your turn. Is social media a rich person’s game?

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