Content overload and ROI failure

A while ago I wrote here that my main thoughts about online and digital 2016 is that it will be the year when we are overloaded with irrelevant content in some or most offsite communities (a.k.a. social media).

I am a bit worried about what is going on with all the discussions and thoughts around so called Content Marketing and Inbound Marketing.

I think that there are possible misunderstandings and misinterpretations about what companies shall achieve. I am worried also that outbound ’pay, spray and pray’ will continue and that many users will increasingly start to prefer private messaging hideaways where they don’t have to meet noisy brand news feeds. Hopefully more platforms issue ‘penalties’ as we have seen Google do when someone is breaking its SEO-rules. 

As a consequence, companies that believe that content spamming is something that will create a shortcut for them, and fail to understand that reaching increasingly cognisant online users takes a change of mind-set, will ultimately be rendered irrelevant.

To be relevant today, doesn’t just require you to be where the interested are, but also to shift your mindset and take a starting point in knowing how it is to be them.

Companies are still early in their learning curve and can claim that they are in a ‘we will learn phase’. The challenge with that is that contemporary people have evolved their habits, behaviour and expectations. Onlinification and digitalisation has been on-going for quite a while.

Most companies are in a situation where they understand that they need to change their way of working but lack the knowledge of how and what to do, and in what order.

At the same time very few of the external specialists, consultants and agencies—meant to strengthen these companies—have any real experience of creating true ROI’s or have even applied their own theories on themselves.

From what I’ve read and seen so far this year, I am as worried as when I wrote about this the first time. The difference now is that I experience it each and every day, with increasing frequency. And I do not like it.