Is Your Content Marketing Selfish?
Content marketing. You can’t escape it. The whole marketing world is still discussing it, singing its praises from the rooftops and evangelising about it until they’re blue in the face. However, there is a problem with this almighty entity…
The vast majority of it is utter garbage
Sorry folks, but it’s true. And who’s to blame? Selfish marketers. You see, content marketing should be carried out with one group of people in mind – your audience. Not your own personal development.
Pressure from the top?
Under orders from those floating above you to ‘do content marketing?’ Client’s pushing you to get on the content train? I bet some of you just want to tick the marketing boxes – do I do… social media? YES! content marketing? YES! Paid social? YES! I’m winning then!
Is Digital Killing the English Language?
The nineties and early noughties saw a mass parental-panic about text talk amongst teenagers, but have we now created a monster far more powerful and influential? Social media continues to grow and within this world of sharing and online communication festers a casual attitude to spelling and grammar.
The poor spelling and grammar scattered around the blogosphere and social media today are a result of continuous mistakes and a widespread acceptance of these mistakes. George Orwell summed up the problem –and perhaps the solution – in a 1946 essay:
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.” (George Orwell, 1946, Politics and the English Language)
Though outdated (understatement of the year), this theory resonates in the information age. Bad habits are easy to pick up, but how easily can this one be broken? And what effect is it really having on the big picture?
Perhaps for an individual the odd typo is forgivable but a study last summer unveiled some surprising results regarding brand websites: Disruptive Communications asked 1,003 people what was most likely to damage there opinion of a brand (see what I did their?) and 42.5% responded with “poor spelling or grammar”. Whilst online requires completely different treatment to traditional mediums, this statistic shows that correct English should remain a top priority.
The Velocity Digital Culture Manifesto
Last week I wrote about steps we were putting in place in order to breed the kind of company culture that will be of huge benefit to our team and clients. I’ve pulled it all together now and the whole team have given feedback, so I thought I’d publish the whole lot here. Why? Well, I think it’s good to share approaches among businesses, I’ve learned a lot from hearing about the workings of other companies. Here it is…
Introduction
The office move and new website (coming soon) are a fresh start for Velocity Digital! We’ll be two in August and that makes us a toddler – we’re growing fast and discovering new things. This is a good time for me to evaluate the business and its future. The aim of this document is to set out what the values of the business, the culture I feel we want to create and what’s expected of the people that make up the business. This documents forms the basis of that and of course is wide open to feedback – I’m not dictating from the top-down! It will also be regularly updated as we put it into practice and learn more about how we work together.
Key principles of Velocity Digital
Our work will always:
- Have the benefit of our clients at its core
- Reflect the personality of our clients
- Have creativity as a key component
- Be steeped in attention to detail
- Use the latest techniques to deliver results
- Be as measurable as possible
- Be adapted in relation to data and insights
