You need to create ridiculously good content – content that is useful, enjoyable and inspired.
– Ann Handley, digital marketing pioneer, writer and speaker
For the past few weeks, I dipped my toe in what I can only describe as the most creative and challenging part of my career in journalism.
I’ve been tasked to look after the content creation and social media aspect of the daily and let me begin by saying – it is definitely easier said than done.
For a start, the content creation and more particularly the videography market is saturated as it is.
This is not YouTube circa 2006 when nobody bothered making home videos and starting their own channel on the scarcely populated platform.
This is definitely not Facebook circa 2009 when the topic of the day was MySpace and Friendster where the Mark Zuckerberg founded social media company was looking to get its big break.
In a nutshell, it’s like selling egg in a place where everyone is raising chickens in their backyard.
Heck, it’s like buying a couple of hens from the weekend market and waiting patiently for them to lay eggs while your neighbours already have their own chicken farm and egg factory, producing them by the truckload.
So, what are the challenges you might ask? Firstly, is to understand the trend – what type of content would appeal most to people.
And no, it is not something that you yourself would fancy. Taste varies, opinions, conviction and belief vary too.
You might think content A would be selling like hotcakes and people won’t have enough of it while content B would be a throwaway, create-for-the-sake-of-creating and fulling-the-quota type of affair.
You would be surprised that the latter is more well received than the former by netizens.
Let’s talk about production quality then. Content A is top-tier, high-end cinematography marvel and content B is the run-of-the-mill, shaky, blurry, little production value heap of dung.
Content B gets more views.
So there lies the decision to which kind of production you would choose. Is it the beautifully crafted type of product or is it the inexplicably poor-quality manure in the shape of a video?
Unfortunately, it is the latter.
The netizens are so often fed low quality clickbait type of content that it becomes the accepted norm.
Those who simply want a huge following would follow the formula and unsurprisingly found success.
Just scroll through your news feed and reels, you’d find exactly good examples of these. Same goes for cheap tabloid articles run by unscrupulous blogsites.
The dilemma now is that, I happen to work for a daily which is reputable, in print since the last century and has brand recognition, churning out proper news articles.
So, would I stoop so low and somehow degrade the present brand turning to clickbait for views, likes and follows?
You might think no, but then again, content creation and the social media are a tough nut to crack.
Of course, we can take the high-and-mighty route and be holier than thou – thinking “let’s skip these altogether and maintain print publication exclusively”.
But then again, if we are to swim against the tide – we’d be swallowed by the incoming wave.
Most definitely, we wouldn’t want to be left behind as the ship is set to sail.
As for now, I am going with my gut and putting production quality first and foremost. I like to think that sooner rather than later, the audience would be more selective in their taste, opting for quality rather than quantity.
I’ve seen good examples of this exact strategy by several social media pages and channels.
Eventually, it becomes a niche that more and more people are interested in – something that has an identity and people can relate to, in their own ways.
It is not impossible to make it in the current market – what we need is the correct strategy and exploit the suitable niche.
I dream of the day that we’d be running a full-fledged production house with its own personnel under the daily’s umbrella.
There are so many opportunities – so many doors that are yet to be opened. The key thing is just that we need to start somewhere.
Besides quality, what I’m eager to nail is consistency. A video could not have a too big gap in quality with the last one.
When you deliver a product that is of good quality, there is an expectation that it must be maintained.
That is what I’m looking to do. I hope this goes well; I hope we will deliver.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
