Not long ago I read Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel by Gary Shteyngart a weird but worthwhile futuristic book that made me laugh and grimace all at once.
In it, the content creators are “so Media” which is a compliment as they are the most popular, successful people in the culture of the future. What are they doing to become so sought after? Streaming content constantly; the trashier, the more outrageous, the better. The rest of the population is so addicted to absorbing information that it’s practically all they do, constantly staring at their “äppäräts” — the next-generation smartphone in Shteyngart’s world. (If there was a prize for BEST USE OF AN UMLAUT IN LITERATURE this would be it.)
Is this where we’re headed?
In a way, I think yes.
As a society we’re constantly increasing the amount of time, the methods and the places we’re absorbing content. Take a look at this information from Nielsen:
We’re spending MILLIONS of hours a month absorbing content from blogs and social networks. We know, statistically, that a website with a blog gets 55% more traffic. There is an exponentially, rapidly increasing value in having employees who create content on behalf of your company.
Are your employees ready for this? Have you built this responsibility into employees’ responsibilities, schedules and performance ratings?
If there’s not a plan for developing this content within your company, are you able to outsource it? How?
Excellent analysis, Marijean. And I think we could take it a step further. Look below the 906 million hours spent on blogs and Social Media. Many of those sectors are very “social” and build around community. For many, online gaming is a means of community building…a very social activity. On smaller scales, things like email and instant messaging are related to communication, relationships, and being social. And even the search category is becoming more social.
The web is a much less static place these days, and this points out the value in “socializing” everything, especially our normally static web sites.
Thanks for the props on this, Ken. I agree that closer attention needs to be paid to gaming and building community and think that communicators would do well to learn firsthand how to both develop games to promote products and services as well as how to build communities by connecting people through a variety of means. The best communicators are connectors and one way people connect is through content.
This is fascinating! Question: Have Nielsen, or anyone else, broken this down further by quality of content? Meaning is having ANY blog on a site enough to increase traffic that much, or does the blog have to be good? I’m hoping there’s some sway to the latter, but fear that the former is more likely.