Social Media Consultants Tend to Reheat Leftovers

There are couple of things that I try to keep constant in my life. One of them happens to be reading Seth Godin’s blog every morning. The post for today caught my eye because of the title, The New Lazy Journalism. The post is excellent because Seth brings up an interesting point that we all need to understand as marketers.

From Seth’s post:

We don’t need paid professionals to do retweeting for us. They’re slicing up the attention pie thinner and thinner, giving us retreaded rehashes of warmed over news, all hoping for a bit of attention because the issue is trending. We can leave that to the unpaid, I think.

The hard part of professional journalism going forward is writing about what hasn’t been written about, directing attention where it hasn’t been, and saying something new.

The random mention of paid professionals retweeting was a little off topic… in my opinion. However, it does bring up an interesting point.

In a world where days mean nothing and seconds are everything… how do you create content that is new? How do you create something that will be shared? Not because it is a trending topic but because it is original. And because it helps your bottom line.

There are many social media consultants who talk about retweeting, friending, following, building content calendars, and automating tasks. I’m at fault as much as the next… we create content calendars and systems in order to gain more attention online… and we tend not to focus on the important part of the overall puzzle.

Systems and automation are important but only a small part of the puzzle.

One extremely small part…

The biggest puzzle piece should be – our content. The biggest issue in marketing, content creation, and story telling is the lack of…. actual content. Real content! New content!

Let’s say you are having a dinner with important guests. It is important that you find a professional cook… because frankly… you are terrible at cooking. When interviewing for the meal… are you  going to hire a professional cook to reheat the leftovers or create a meal that will dazzle?

The same applies to your marketing.

I’m still an advocate of creating your own content but if you need to hire a professional… talk about real content. What does it mean to them and how does it drive revenue.