When Mark Schaefer wrote about content shock back in 2014, we saw a new trend. As more content populated the web and our 24 hour days never grew in proportion to this level of content creation, we found ourselves overwhelmed by content.
Content shock was and still is the reason why it’s harder for today’s newbie to grow a digital empire than it was for newbies from 10 years ago to do the same. Back then, there was much less content and fewer big players. Now the web is filled to the brim with content.
Content shock is only growing, and even our most loyal fans juggle our blogs with other people’s blogs. Marketing has always been a battle of attention, but the future winners of content marketing will go beyond the level of expectation to attract that attention.
The Chatterbox Revolution Is The Key To Expansion
When you post new content, you might attract people to it. They’ll read it for a little bit and then go somewhere else. If your’e lucky, these people will follow you on social networks and subscribe to your email list.
At this stage, your reader will receive your content in a variety of forms. This may sound great since you get them on multiple platforms, especially the email list.
While this will definitely get you returning visitors, realize that growing your social media audience and getting them on your email list is no big secret. EVERYONE is trying to achieve those objectives because they’re easy and effective.
Just get people to follow you on social media and send them to your email list. If you have 1,000 people on your email list, send one email and 1,000 people get it.
The winners of the future are the people who interact on a 1-to-1 level with as many of those 1,000 people as possible. They’re interacting with as many of their Twitter followers as possible and outreaching as often as possible.
Sending 100 emails in one day to people in your audience and another 100 for outreach will be considered productive instead of time sucking. Even if you delegate both of these tasks to save time, you’ll still need to do some of the responding and outreaching.
This is what I like to call the Chatterbox Revolution. In the past, brushing interaction to the side in favor of producing more content or doing almost anything was the norm. Interaction happened, but it wasn’t the priority. Whether it was content creation, product creation, or marketing, something else always seemed to be more important.
Now interacting with your audience and building new relationships on a 1-to-1 level are the two top priorities of your business.
Yes, growing a social media audience and an engaged email list are still important. However, you’re not doing anything special by building up those audiences. Special happens when you interact with individual people beyond any of your automation strategies currently in place.
It’s taking the time to reply to hundreds of comments each day. It’s commenting on other people’s blogs more often and getting into other conversations. It’s having longer conversations with your audience.
Your audience will increasingly love you for the attention you give them, and in return for your attention, they will give you their attention. The Chatterbox Revolution views attention as a two-way street where you must pay attention to your audience so they pay attention to you.
What Happens To Content Creation?
Each time you create a new piece of content, you give your audience another reason to give you their attention. If you don’t publish a blog post in a month, your audience doesn’t have to check back in for a month. Give them that long to check in, and they won’t remember who you are.
It’s important for us to be frequent and consistent with content creation. I’m publishing a new blog post and a new podcast episode every day because that gives my audience plenty of reasons to pay attention to what I’m doing. If anyone in my audience thinks of me upon waking up, they know I either published something new or am about to.
With that said, I don’t see people spending as much time writing content. I only write one blog post per day. In the past, I wrote three blog posts on 1-2 day and held off for the rest of the week. That resulted in my inconsistency, and since I wrote 2,000+ word blog posts, it took a long time for me to go from idea to finished content.
Some content creators will increasingly update their old material and publish it as new material. This is a time-effective strategy that will provide their audience with new content and give these content creators more time to embrace the Chatterbox Revolution.
For some, it will be more about playing with what they already have than creating new stuff.
Some content creators will embrace daily blog posts, but they won’t be as long as usual. I almost never aim for 2,000+ word blog posts anymore because each minute I spend writing a blog post is another minute that I can’t interact with someone in my audience.
At the same time, people pay attention because of the content I provide, so I handle my content creation with care. For me, this is a more concise blog post than what I’ve written in the past. I almost never spend more than 30 minutes on a blog post anymore.
I want to get the message down without too much scrolling. That way, you’ll have more bandwidth to stick around and read a few more blog posts. Now all I have to do on capitalize on this extra attention is to interact with you on a 1-to-1 level.
In Conclusion
The Chatterbox Revolution is now in full swing, but there were content creators ahead of their time. Two that quickly come to mind are Neil Patel and Gary Vaynerchuk. Neil responds to every comment on his blog, and while others may do the same, Neil can get hundreds of comments for a given blog post. Gary Vee interacts with his audience by taking their questions and communicating with social media and email.
One thing you’ll also notice is that these content creators produce a lot of content (at least one new piece of content every day). Some of it can be recycled, but they’re providing their audience with a new piece of content every day.
What are your thoughts on the Chatterbox Revolution? Are you ready to embrace it, or not yet? Do you have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.