Does Your Content Marketing have KARMA?

Here’s the thing: since content became “king” everyone’s battering away at their keyboards trying to get as much content out there as possible, but a blog from Seth Godin stopped me in my tracks the other day, as Seth highlighted the formulaic way of blogging. He represents it as follows:

“The standard linkbait headline:

([Integer between 5 and 10] WAYS to [action verb like avoid or stumble or demolish] [juicy adjective like stupid or embarrassing or proven] [noun].)”

So, my question is: With everyone writing to the same formula, who’s going to keep reading?

There are plenty of writers, but who is reading? Are you?

Content marketing requires content, but generic content is simply flooding the social media sites with substandard – or worse, boring mediocre content that achieves nothing. There are parallels to be made with advertising here.

If content marketers are looking to have their articles shared and quoted, then there’s a high chance they are using formulas to attract attention and hopefully get a soundbite quoted somewhere.

Soundbites = Quotes

If so, they are probably looking to do this: find a message and package the message within a soundbite category (soundbite: “a short phrase or sentence that captures the essence of what the speaker was trying to say”) as follows:

• Analogies


• Bold action words


• Cliches


• Humour


• Pop culture references


• Rhetorical questions


• Absolutes


• Specific examples

And let’s not forget the marketing acronym…

Have you heard of KARMA? What? You’ve never heard of KARMA before?

K.A.R.M.A:

Know

A

Rubbish

Marketing

Acronym

Before you put your content out there think about how rubbish it may be – unless you believe there is no such thing as bad publicity.

And finally, let’s kill the cliché. To avoid those embarrassing clichés here’s a useful link to add to your writer’s tools:

http://authonomy.com/writing-tips/publishers-list-of-phrases-for-writers-to-avoid/

Thanks for reading. Hope this blog wasn’t boring.

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AStanley_Kubrick_LACMA_exhibit_-_All_Work_And_No_Play_Makes_Jack_A_Dull_Boy.jpg]

Source: B2C_Business

Does Your Content Marketing have KARMA?