Time is the new currency and while the hype machine may indicate that you should produce a lot of content your audience just doesn’t have the time to read most of it.
Step away from the Internet for a while and most likely when you come back you’re going to find your RSS feed(s) with hundreds of stories along with updates to your social media feeds. Consumers are being bombarded with content and the truth is that they just don’t have the time to read it all which is why most people ignore it.
Here’s a perfect example; I have Business Insider in my RSS feed yet when I go to meet with clients or go on a bike ride there are a lot of stories from this content machine and 99% are irrelevant to me. I don’t even have the time to read the RSS feeds anymore and delete them after scanning them quickly.
There are those that tell you that you need content to engage your audience, but I would add that relevant content is very hard to target because today’s audiences are so fragmented. What is relevant to a Millennial housewife in Virginia may not be relevant to a Gen X housewife in Iowa.
The key is for marketers to understand just how relevant their brand is to their customers. I might purchase DiGiorno pizza because I like it, but I don’t want to have an online relationship with the brand.
The idea that someone is going to come back to your branded site again and again is a pure myth. Consumers just don’t have the time, so get it right when they first come to your site through content they need and want in the first visit.
