Content Strategy

Create More Content: Why Every Brand Needs to Think Like a Media Company

We’re used to waking up to our phones ablaze with notifications, some more meaningful than others. Rubbing our eyes and reintegrating with reality, we then do the red dot clearance dance, sifting through our emails, news, social media and texting apps to decide which messages warrant a response.

Consumers today live in what’s called the ‘Attention Economy,’ which means that we day trade our attention as if it were a commodity…

And it is.

Both in our daily lives and in the grander scheme of things, we are quite literally picking and choosing who or what we ‘pay attention’ to.

This may seem like nothing more than semantics, but consider this —

“Since there is a surplus of information, more information flowing through our society than any of us could ever hope to process or understand, the new bottleneck on our economy is attention…

This is why today we are each bombarded with over 3,000 advertising messages per day. This is why these advertisements get zanier and more nonsensical — like the Geico gecko or the Old Spice guy — because the goal of advertisements is no longer information, but simply attention.”

~Mark Manson, In The Future Our Attention Will Be Sold

In the ‘Age of the Internet,’ businesses first have to compete for your eyes before they can reach your pockets… And even though Spotify, Netflix, Instagram, Peloton, Playstation, Medium, and Gmail all play different roles in our lives, they still compete for our attention every single day.

As consumers, we’re constantly coming to micro-decisions as to which brand to choose, which link to click, which post to stop scrolling on.

So how can brands incentivize people to pay attention to them?

‍

The Jump From Advertising to Content Marketing

In recent years, brands have started adapting to the growing understanding of the Attention Economy. From Meme Marketing to experiential activations to influencer partnerships and so forth, companies are experimenting with new, creative ways to grab a slice of the attention pie.

At the heart of this shift is a move from traditional ‘spray-and-pray’ methods popularized through radio and television commercials, to something more targeted, individualistic and engaging. Indeed, advertising today no longer feels like advertising; with the ability to skip ads, pay for their removal or simply shift focus momentarily, companies need to rethink how they promote themselves in a way that feels non-invasive and is actually entertaining.

This means meeting consumers where they’re already spending the bulk of their time: social media.

With over 3.5 billion users (roughly 45% of the global population), social media has become the modern day colosseum for attention gladiators. Brands that fail to capitalize on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium and so on are leaving an incredible potential for doing business on the table.

As Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of Vaynermedia said to talkshow host Larry King,

“Social media is a slang term for ‘the current state of the internet.’ When you position it that way, you start to take it a lot more seriously.”‍

So how should organizations approach social?