I’m going to take a break from the usual discussions on how to produce great content, best practices, and ideas, to dive into editorial for this week (though if you want the utility value, I will deliver towards the end of the article). Countless blogs, including our own, have talked about how much content is out there and how hard it is to compete for the attention of your target audience. I have long asked myself, what does this say about our society? What does it say that we are so inundated with books, movies, and other forms of entertainment that it all must compete for our time? What if I said that the answer to the question posed by the title was “yes”?
Now, I will admit: most of the content produced is garbage. One of the first lines in a blog post several months ago began with the proclamation that your content is crap. However, I consider how history has a tendency to preserve the worthy while destroying the weak. Contemporary with historical greats like Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Michelangelo were thousands of artists, writers, and sculptors whose works have been lost to history. These nameless masses, so forgotten that the collective consciousness does not even recall their category existed, failed to be great and so were forgotten. The same can be said of content today: while the digital world threatens to preserve all, history will only pass on what is worthy of being passed. True, some digital archeologist of the future mining the depths of the deep web may come across some embarrassing tidbit that we hoped would be lost forever, but the collective consciousness will only recall the best of the age.
Now, I don’t expect you just to accept that we have entered an age that will be remembered for the creation of timeless pieces that will be remembered for as long as we can view them, there are many indicators that we are entering a new renaissance that I will outline below.
Sheer Quantity of Content
You have probably heard the expression “a thousand monkeys typing at a thousand typewriters for a thousand years will produce the complete written works of Shakespeare.” While mathematically dubious (the odds of randomly producing even one of Shakespeare’s plays are so astronomically small as to be impossible for all practical purposes), it does speak to how repetition over very large numbers will occasionally result in statistically improbable events.
However, note that this is at random, and human beings most certainly are not random creatures. When we produce content, we want it to be consumed and enjoyed by our audience. Furthermore, we are creating more content (written works, graphics, videos, games) than we have at any point in human history. In fact, according to a Science Daily article, the period from 2011 – 2013 produced 90% of all data created by man up to that time (the article was written May 2013). Moreover, all of that data is analyzed, reported on, and written about.
With the sheer demand for content by marketing agencies and the consumer alike, the chances of producing an excellent work of art steadily increase.
Practice, practice, practice
The practice that people are getting ties in with the statement regarding the volume of content above. As stated previously, humans are not random creatures. We want the stuff we produce to meet a particular end, and when it fails to meet the quality we expect we get feedback and correct our methods in order to produce a more acceptable result. The number of opportunities out there for independent artists to practice their trade are greater than at any point in human history. With an internet connection, people can make their hobby pay for itself while working a full-time or part-time job to make ends meet. Once you have had enough time to practice your skills, you can apply those skills towards a career.
Remember that all the great Renaissance artists had time to practice. The demand gives people opportunities to practice that did not exist before, refining their crafts from amateurish to masterwork through sheer brute force.
We are Getting Smarter
While there are many faults in our education system, the fact is: people are getting “smarter”. I put this word in quotes because intelligence is still very difficult to measure, but IQ tests suggest that every generation is more intelligent than their descendants. This effect, called the Flynn Effect, has made it so that IQ tests have to be made harder to maintain an average score of 100. Now, Flynn himself (for whom the effect is named after), suggests that we are intelligent in different ways. We are more analytical and logical than our ancestors were, but we probably wouldn’t have as good a memory (you can read an excellent article on this by the Smithsonian here).
Furthermore, as people pursue more cognitively demanding jobs, they are becoming more creative, logical, and analytical. Psychologists have long recognized that the brain is much like a muscle: the more you use it, the fitter it is. With jobs demanding more and more of our brain power, our mind must adapt to these requirements and build up more endurance and more power. The net effect is the capacity to produce much better content as time moves forward than previous generations.
We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
However, we cannot arrogantly proclaim that humans of today are leagues beyond what our ancestors were. One could argue that the increase in average intelligence comes from the fact that people are more educated on average than in the past, and the fact with education is that in order for it to make it into the school system: somebody has to discover it. It is easy to proclaim superiority by understanding germ theory, but it is very difficult to put germ theory together until somebody finds these tiny little microorganisms, and you can’t find them until someone builds a microscope, and nobody will think to make a microscope unless they think there is something to find.
The fact is, previous generations have produced some exceptionally brilliant individuals in many fields, and what they learned is now being passed to students in school. Once the knowledge is passed on, these students are free to build on that knowledge and information to say “what next?” Centuries of writing, painting, and sculpting have taught artists what resonates with audiences and what does not. Just as much time spent in marketing has taught advertisers who learn from history what triggers the impulse to buy and what turns people away from your brand.
Leonardo Da Vinci, though a fantastic artist, was also known as a brilliant inventor who was centuries ahead of his time, and from that brilliance and the intelligence of others like him we have tools to make the next big leap.
The Utility Value
I hope I’ve made a strong case for the foundations that will fuel a new renaissance. However, I still need to fulfill a promise made in the first paragraph: what is the utility value? While the occasional editorial is acceptable, ultimately this IS a business blog, not a personal one. It should offer something of value to customers. The value here is an understanding of the scope of the competition in the internet marketing and especially the content marketing space.
Many have written about how to make your content stand out (a quick Google search for “How do I Make My Content Stand Out?” reveals a first page filled with articles on exactly that), but few understand just how serious the competition is. It is not just making your content stand out amongst the noise: if you deliver useful, interesting, relevant material and use promotional tools like Outbrain and ESPECIALLY make use of social media channels, your content will stand out. What will be difficult though, is handling competition that is just as good as you are and delivering the same quality.
Somewhere out there, probably working for your competitor, is the next great writer, the next great film director, the next great artist, getting their start in a marketing department somewhere and honing their craft. The overwhelming majority of content might be spam, but these are the people who will be able to bury your content just on quality alone. The good news is that there are others just as brilliant out in the pool of the unemployed somewhere, and you just need to find them.
Of course, such individuals do not come cheap. Somebody who is highly skilled at their job knows they are highly skilled, and will demand compensation to match with their abilities. Furthermore, if you stifle these individuals with unreasonable deadlines and a small budget, you’ll never get the full potential out of them. Invest heavily in your creative content teams. Otherwise you might find yourself a forgotten shadow of history. Without such investment, you may end up among the billions who have lived and died throughout history. Forgotten, eclipsed by the competition whose efforts made them immortal.
