Why Mass Appeal Content Is Sinking Your Social Media

Mass Appeal Content

In the quest to create content and woo consumers to your social and web pages, your brand may be getting sidetracked by sharing mass-appeal content that isn’t performing. You need to do more than just share content, you need to tell your own stories. This isn’t the green light to start talking about yourself or pushing your own products 100% of the time, but it is a reminder about the importance of doing your own thing. This probably sounds cliché, but it’s one of the biggest problems brands are struggling with in the face of exponentially increasing noise online.

Mass Appeal Content Doesn’t Build Relationships

There’s one big reason why this is so darn important. You’re the only one who can own your story and this is how you make your content unique. If your content is not unique, there’s no reason to choose you over anyone else. This makes you disposable. You can’t build relationships off of a content strategy that relies heavily on borrowed content.

Mass Appeal Content Means Competing with Publishers

Major publishers cover mass appeal content. This means that in order to get the attention of your audience and get them to keep coming to you, you’re competing directly with the biggest media publishers and news outlets. The amount of financial and human capital it would take to compete with the big boys makes creating general content an unsustainable strategy.

A Look at the Sports Ecosystem and How It Relates to Orthopedics

To illustrate the problems of competing with mass players with your social and content marketing, let’s take a look at the sports and orthopedics industries. There are many different products that fit under the sports industry category that could potentially share sports-related content, including orthopedics companies who provide products that help people recover from injuries.

It’s important for anyone creating sports-related content to take into consideration that there are massive media organizations dedicated entirely to producing sports-only content, around the clock.

What Consumers Want from Media Organizations

The following are some of the reasons why a consumer might choose to follow a particular sports channel (TV, website, social, etc.)

a) Coverage of my sport

b) Coverage of many sports

c) Unique commentary I agree with

d) Entertaining personality

e) Fastest reporting

f) Exclusive coverage of a particular event, incident, interview, etc.

g) Always on

You Can’t Compete Directly Against Organizations Whose Sole Purpose is to Create Content 24/7

For the majority of sports-related brands, it doesn’t make sense to compete with any kind of content like this.

The problem is that many brands are unknowingly going head to head with some of the biggest content creators online. It might not seem like a battle, because this kind of brand content gets lost in the noise so quickly, but it is. Every time you share some generic sports news, you’re so outnumbered by the major networks that you’re basically committing social hara kiri.

A breakdown of sports networks and orthopedic companies by number of Twitter followers.

Instead of throwing content to the wind, why not focus your time and resources on a battle you can win? Focus on providing value for your audience.

This means you can share existing sports content and put your own spin on it (i.e. provide a unique insight or expert insight specific to your product’s particular focus) or create completely original content.

Any kind of content people can already get from these mega sports providers won’t drive social results. People don’t look to orthopedics companies for their daily dose of sports news. That’s what ESPN’s for. And when you look at ESPN’s total domination of the industry, you’ll realize how futile it would be to compete with them in any way, shape, or form.

Add Your Own Value

You have to add your own value. Fortunately, you do have value to offer; otherwise you wouldn’t be in business in the first place. Successful social and content strategies come from analyzing how you deliver value to customers and finding ways to either deliver this value in the digital form or to add value. For example, many companies are utilizing social channels to provide customer support. You can also use social channels to build relationships with existing customers in order to cultivate loyalty. Or, you can educate consumers on important topics that will help them in their buying process. There are many, many ways to leverage social effectively to get meaningful results. Sharing without having a specific goal in mind is not one of them.

How To Know if Your Content Is Valuable

Value is largely dependent on context. For example, a cold glass of water isn’t very exciting or worth much to you if you’re at home with unlimited access to cold, filtered water. However, when you’re on a hike in hot weather with no access to clean water, that same glass of water can all of a sudden become extremely valuable to you. –> Context matters

This also illustrates the idea of scarcity. When there isn’t much of something available, it becomes more valuable. –> Availability matters

You would like to buy new boots for the winter. At home, you see a pair of boots at your local department store for $80, but you decide you’d rather not spend that much money right now. On a trip to Italy, you gladly spend $500 on a pair of authentic, handmade Italian leather boots. –> Unique, one-of-a-kind matters

Therefore, if you want your content to be of high value to your audience, you need to give them something they can’t find anywhere else.

Everything else you create is substitutable. If someone can find the same sports story from eight other publishers, there’s no reason for people to get it from you.

Conclusion

While it’s important to get the attention of your target market and get them to like you, you’re not out there just for the sake of making friends with people on social media. You’re there to serve your audience. This includes existing customers and potential new ones.

Every piece of content you share should have a purpose. Before you post anything, think from the perspective of a consumer, and ask, “so what?” If you can’t answer why there’s any significance, you’re not serving your audience. Furthermore, you need to take it one step further and ask “so what?” from a business perspective. If your social media isn’t driving business results, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy. The opportunity social provides for businesses to cost-effectively reach consumers at scale is too great to pass up.

Why Mass Appeal Content Is Sinking Your Social Media