Guide to Surviving the Zombie Content Apocalypse #NMX

Uh oh. The apocalypse is coming. It’s like impending doom, lurking closer and closer, threatening to take us down. What’s even worse is that we’re bringing it upon ourselves.

But there is still hope for survival. We can draw our proverbial swords, channel our inner hero and fight back. In her NMX session, Social Media Explorer’s Tamsen Webster taught how with The Content Apocalypse Survival Guide: How to Keep Your Content Alive and Kicking in 2014.

I thought this talk was about content. I never imagined what happened next.

Crap content and hoax headlines are starting to take over. They’re even being picked up by big media. You know the kind, headlines just to get the click. They’re zombies. We have to stop them before they kill us. Everyone is content marketing and so many are creating content just to get views without anything of value to the content. Readers are starting to get distrustful of what we’re offering.

The more zombie content we give them, the less and less our readers will bother with it. If we don’t follow up with our headline in our content, customers will stop going for it. We’re making it worse with every single piece of bad writing and content we put out there. Every time someone has that bad experience, they get more distrustful.

How do you identify zombie content?

It’s content that serves the needs of the brand before and over the needs of the customer. Brand centric content is advertising. People already see over 5000 ads a day. Why do you think yours will get through to them when others don’t? If you’re creating brand centric content, you will unlimitedly kill you. Because the virus starts with you, you are in the best position to kill it. Our reason for content is a lie. We tell ourselves it’s about the people. We try to pull them in to serve us. In reality we’re really just trying to serve ourselves. Why should we serve ourselves if we’re trying to appeal to other people and motivate them to engage or convert?

So how do we kill zombie content?

The 2 ways you kill zombie content are the same ways you kill a zombie:

Kill it on sight by removing it’s head from it’s body:

• Does my product or service make the occasion better? If it doesn’t, kill it! Does this product or service make the customer better? No? Kill it.
• Would I say that if I didn’t work here? Take the marketer hat off.
• Would I share it? If you didn’t work there, is it something you’d care about?
• Will it compete with cats? If you’re asking to be invited into people’s personal streams, you’re competing with their ex-high school boyfriend and cats on their feeds.
• Does it belong here? If it could be on Condescending Corporate Brand Page on Facebook, don’t put it up. Kill it on sight!

Starve it:

This one is super easy. If you don’t feed the beast it won’t get bigger. Stop making content that only serves your goals. Self promotion, sales focused junk and fluff created to simply drive traffic. Stop it. If you don’t feed the zombies they won’t grow and they will die.

The content apocalypse may be coming but we can fight back. We need to recognize the problem we’re creating and fight back. Stop feeding the horde. If we cut the zombie’s head off and starve it we still stand a chance.