The attack of the Content Zombies
The Attack of the Content ZombieIt’s that time of year again, ghouls and goblins, pumpkins and social media capitalising on a Halloween theme. You got it, no different here!
Is your content a zombie?
I have lost count of the amount of articles I have read about Social Media users being zombies, and while you may agree or disagree with them as content creators are we to blame? Are we guilty of creating content sometimes so bland to chase organic reach or to bend an algorithm to get better engagement our content becomes zombified?
Characteristics of a content zombie?
Living Dead - The content exists, but its lifeless, broadcasting the same message that has been around since 2012, the world's moved on but the content has not. They treat social media marketing like email marketing in the 00’s spray and pray with little thought for the user, the customer experience nor engagement.
Decaying - They repurpose every bit of content, with no attempt to freshen it up, It's part of the automated content loop that pumps out content to achieve frequency goals (or should we say ghouls), It has been repurposed so many times it's beginning to rot. It's turned green and is emits a putrid smell.
Unemotional - The message frequently goes straight for the sale, offering no value to the audience. They are uninterested in the customer's world, they have a product or service to shift and believe that all the world needs to know is they are a market leader using some self invented metric.
Hungry for human flesh - They are hungry for your page likes, views and shares, the more consumers ignore their content the hungrier they get and the more frequently they push out the message. They don’t care about real engagement they just want vanity metrics to make the content look good. You may even find them creating a facebook ad to tell the world how many likes they got on a piece of content they nicked off someone who created it back in 2014 all to impress you,
Does not attack other zombies - Ignoring best practice they will often form swarms of content zombies defending bad practice.
Groaning and howling instead of speaking - They are not advocates of engagement, the content does not provoke discussion and nor will they respond to praise or criticism in the comments. They may reach out to influencers using direct message explaining why it's in their interest to share their content, however do not expect a relationship building exercise here, it will be blunt and to the point.
Solving the content zombie problem
Well good news for all the advocates of content marketing and those social media marketers who choose to create content with an audience in mind, you just need to continue doing what you do best. As consumers become wiser and better educated they see through the content zombie and a lack of consumer engagement and interest will kill them off.
The next few weeks offers you and your clients a chance to be a little more creative with your content, if nothing else Halloween is a chance to have a little fun and “creep it real”
We would love to see your content for Halloween so “if you’ve got it haunt it”, and if you post a screen grab or link on the post or email us we will be picking the best executed campaign or post and giveaway a ticket to #socialdayuk the big 3 day event on 30th May to 1st June 2018.
Looking forward to seeing your unBOOlievable content.