“Content is king, but context is God.” Gary Vaynerchuk
Bill Gates authored the first part of the quote in his 1996 essay about the Internet. “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” His prediction couldn’t be more spot on. He makes further projections about the future of the Internet, including advertising, the transition from print to online, and what consumers will want.
Fast forward to the present, where each day produces 3.5 billion Google searches and 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. With so much out on the Internet today, consumers are wading through the depths for valuable content.
Author Gary Vaynerchuk added to Bill Gates’s quote “but context is God” in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy World. People place greater importance on their time because there is less of it. The content needs to be of value and relative to the platform that it’s on. Consumers are looking for something that will give them the same emotional benefits as getting likes on Facebook or watching cute dog videos.
Even though Vaynerchuk discusses this through a digital marketing lens, I believe it applies to other non-fictional content. Assuming that you are writing a journalism piece, your goal is to have consumers read it. You would have to know the popular social media platforms and how they present information. For example, you would need to know that Instagram is a photo-based social media app. The photo posted should speak for itself, with a short caption and relevant hashtags. A stock image with a long description will ruin the content, but posting a stunning photo with a one-line description will enhance it.
Consumers also need to feel connected, and the content needs to resonate with them in some way. If the journalism piece’s audience is the younger crowd, integrating current pop culture or memes will capture their attention. You are connecting to their “language,” so to speak.
My experience with this comes from my podcast. My co-hosts and I specifically chose Tumblr and Twitter as our platforms because they had the most people we could connect with and get them to come back for future episodes. For Twitter, we mixed emojis and hashtags in the tweet to introduce our new episode, along with a custom GIF. For Tumblr, we changed the post to have more text, fewer emojis, popular hashtags, and several GIFs.
On a personal level, I have found myself focusing on context when posting on social media. There are specific pictures and videos that I will post on Instagram and not on Facebook. Most of my friends on Instagram are my age, so they will understand any jokes or memes that I post. I can’t do the same with Facebook because I’m friends with many older people who would not understand my post.
Content creators need to understand what platform they are using, how it functions, and how to remain “with the times.” Credibility increases if the content is tailored to the platform’s functionality because it shows that the creator can adapt to current trends. I don’t know about you, but I quickly scroll past something that is either not formatted correctly or demonstrates the creator’s ignorance of how to use the platform.
Source: Nielsen Norman Group
As quintillion bytes of data are generated each day, it becomes crucial for both the author and consumer to sift through the nonsense and get to the heart of what is really wanted: worthy content. Free time is decreasing along with attention spans, so giving both content and context is indispensable for the success of today’s digital creators.
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