Did you run into any sludge over the holidays?
Let me back up. My husband loves a good Christmas movie. For him, the cheesier the better. Hallmark marathon of jingle bells-themed romantic comedies? He’s all in.
And every year, he tries to convince me to spend December evenings sampling some of the new Christmas movies that have been released. Most years, I agree. But this year, we both noticed a trend that stripped some of the joy from this silly tradition.
Netflix knows that we all love cheesy holiday movies, and they. Made. Tons of them. Want your holiday movie in the form of a family comedy series with a laugh track? Check. Want a teen drama with snow and angst? Got that. And, of course, if you want secret royals and Christmas-timed pregnancies, they delivered in spades. Netflix offered up a Christmas content overload.
And it was ALL BAD. Not funny-bad. Bad-bad. When we were sitting on the couch cringing through a laugh track scene, I turned to my husband and said, “this is…content, all right.”
Netflix reminded me of a lesson I have learned before — when you create “content” just for the sake of making content, but without obsessing about the quality and the details and what will wow your audience, the work falls completely flat.
When you see content that was created JUST TO HAVE CONTENT, you’re seeing what I call “sludge.” The internet is filled with sludge.
As we look ahead at 2020, I see oceans of content. There’s more content than any person could ever consume. I have weeks of podcasts I could listen to, endless lists of articles I could read, and a long queue of TV shows I could watch (or ignore while I read other, more interesting content on my phone).
How will you add to that ocean of content this year?
Maybe you understand how Netfix got there. Sludge happens all of the time, even when our intentions are good.
This probably sounds familiar: You have a blog post slated on the calendar for the week, but you’re out of ideas or inspiration or questions to answer, so you just slap something together for the sake of publishing.
You need to share something on social today, so you mimic what other people in your space are posting.
When you do that, your audience isn’t thankful for more content. They’re bored. And they leave. We have a lower and lower tolerance for bad content, because who has time to waste when there are so many other options out there?
How will you add to that ocean of content this year?
Here’s my pledge to you, myself, and my clients in 2020: I will fight back against bad content. I won’t create content just to get a tiny sliver of people’s attention. I pledge to create content, and help others create content, that adds something new and better and interesting and helpful to the conversation. I won’t publish anything if I don’t have anything to say. I won’t “make content.” I’ll answer questions, share good ideas, and be helpful. I’ll do my small part to clean up the vast ocean of murky content.
No sludge in 2020. Who’s with me?
