Dear marketers, your FOMO is adding to the content avalanche

During the pandemic, the brands are creating content more than ever to engage with consumers. Unknowingly, many are adding to the mound of mediocre content, causing content fatigue among the consumers. BuzzInContent.com caught up with content experts and asked them how brands can unlearn the art of creating average content

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Akansha Srivastava
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Any marketer who understands content marketing also knows about Google's Hero, Hub and Hygiene model. In the process of following the hub and the hygiene step of the model, many a time, unknowingly, brands end up creating mediocre content, which has increased manifold, especially during the pandemic, as all want to be on top of the game through content. The consumers are bombarded with so much mediocre content that somewhere down it is causing fatigue, and they are becoming bored.

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Chaitanya Ramalingegowda

Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, Co-Founder, Wakefit.co, said that excess content is not something that is causing fatigue among the consumers, but mediocre content is. He explained, "Whether it's our content or some other brand's content; if it's not up to the mark in terms of creativity, production quality and thought process behind it, the content will die very quickly. You cannot push it even with lakhs and lakhs of money."

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Ambarish Ray

Ambarish Ray, Co-Founder and CEO, Digital Dogs Content and Media, added, "People have been forcefully drowned in mediocre content. The consumer is currently held hostage with the medium. For the last so many days, we are locked inside our homes and that's why we are watching so much of content on TV and phone. For example, the other day, I heard a piece of content where it was saying that we all have a higher purpose in life and our purpose is to stay at home.”

During the lockdown, the brands suffered a lot, and the first thing that is reduced to make up the loss is the marketing budget. Slashed marketing budgets have also caused the quality of branded content to go down. 

Ray said the quality of content had been murdered during the lockdown. "Video content consumption has gone up during the lockdown. Hence, everyone wants to take advantage of this trend. It's a vicious circle."

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Prashanth Challapallia

Prashanth Challapalli, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Gravity Integrated, feels brands creating mediocre content have always been the case, irrespective of the pandemic. "Among every 10 branded content pieces you see, only one or two are nice. The problem with brands when it comes to content is the fact that conversations around content are mostly about volume games. How many views can one fetch? I have been saying this for quite some time that in India, not many brands have a well-thought documented content strategy."

He said, "Creating quality content calls for investment in people and a certain framework to be developed. As long as the conversation is about the number of views, there is no way out from mediocre content because I can get a million views by putting money behind media marketing."

While the markets are gradually picking up, the brands are looking out for ways to quickly fetch sales and, hence, linking content to performance marketing. In order to do that, there is less time to spend on curating good quality content, leading to many times in the creation of average quality content.

Ray said short-term performance marketing-led content could help sell for ones, but repeat selling can only happen when you make connections with the people through content where you are not trying to sell yourself on the face. "Today, everybody is experimenting. They might buy your good for once, but if they are disappointed, they will never repurchase it. The cost of experimentation is meagre in these times. Therefore, it's essential to create content that helps in not just selling but repeat selling," he said.

How can brands not add to the already present content avalanche?

First and foremost, if you don't have anything valuable to say, don't say anything. "The value of silence is better than the devalue of noise we are creating," said Ray.

Content marketing and branded content is comparatively new in India, and brands had just begun to experiment with the concepts in the past couple of years. But since the lockdown happened, businesses got impact; the marketers became desperate to figure our means and ways to earn money. They are not leaving any stone unturned even if they are not sure of it. Given the scenario, a lot of times, many brands are jumping the content bandwagon because of the FOMO spread around content marketing. It is something that everyone is doing. This is another reason that is causing excessive content to flood in the industry. There are brands which are unnecessary, creating unrelated, without context, bad quality content just to be in the race.

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Sharmin Ali

Sharmin Ali, Founder and CEO, Instoried, said the whole FOMO thing is absolutely there. "But this is actually a very positive FOMO. This is something you have to do. In fact, in the unlock phase, just like ed-tech, the marketing fraternity is also fetching a lot of work because of it."

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Nicole Ferraz

Nicole Ferraz, Creative Director, Blink Digital, made a point that “one needs to break the moulds your competitors have made for the category, go against the tide, sometimes in its own way, that's clutter-breaking."

"That is going to be a make or break in your deal. One needs to figure out why a certain piece of content does better than the other. You can't be the status quo anymore. You have to create an edge. Content is not about reinventing the wheel, but positioning it in different ways. A wheel can be for a car, scooter and even in a cart. Positioning the content in a way will make or break the deal for you," Ali said. 

Most of the times, we tend to have an urge to show the brand in the content, so much so that it at times end up looking pushed unnecessary in the content and leads to disruption in the content consumption experience. If one wants to place the brand so much in the content, then they must do it in a 30-seconds ad and not content. Content is not about selling but making connections. One needs to understand that if you have a strong connection with your audience, it will lead to sales.

Ferraz said brands must create content that the consumers want to bring up in a conversation. "After all every person, today is about a social conversation that brings engagement and interaction to their pages. Lastly, it's okay if your brand or product isn't the hero of your content. Sometimes your brand needs to be the much-needed platform your consumers are waiting for to interact and engage along with other like-minded individuals. It's okay sometimes for your brand to play gaffer and let your consumer take the spotlight."

Ali's Instoried helps brands emotionally target customers by identifying the emotional quotient and giving tailor-made recommendations, thereby boosting engagement and increasing content productivity.

Ali said, "It is only when you can emotionally engage with the consumers and make them stick to the brand's content only then your content piece is successful. It's highly important to create emotional content because then only they will go on to your website and increase click-through rates, generate leads, decrease bounce rate."

Another way in which brands can help not add to the content avalanche and mediocre content, causing fatigue among the consumers, is that there's no point creating content that doesn't help in achieving revenue goals. Challapalli said, "It's highly important to link content to revenue goals. Not many people talk in this language. Until and unless brands and agencies believe that content can help add to the business, they will not be serious about it."

According to Ray of Digital Dogs, being authentic, relevant and sensitive to the times we will live, it will help create content for brands that have the power to make an impact. He said it doesn't require the best of the production equipment to create good quality content but great creative storytelling. 

"Authenticity is not about creating Shyam Benegal kind of movies, but honestly and truthfully reflecting human truth to the audience. We have to honestly reflect the stories in the times we are living in. People think if they use a good camera, angle, graphics, special and techniques, they will make a great story. The grammar doesn't make a great story. It's like saying, I am a perfect grammar person, and whatever I'll write will be successful."

FOMO