By Stop Saying ‘Content is King’
This particular motto has been flying around for well over seven years now, and at the time, it made sense.
We’ve moved from an industry that was once rife with link spam, poorly formed ploys and (let’s face it) terrible behaviour, to one that is now creating genuinely brilliant creative projects and ideas – which means that ‘content is king’ is no longer anything new, or even relevant.
Those who say it are either boasting about something very standard, are new to the industry, or are so far behind that they’re staring out at the world from their own arse.
It’s like shouting a catchphrase from a decade old television show. Think Little Britain, you get the idea.
Stop weighing in on gigantic industry expert articles
Before we get into it, not all industry expert articles are a waste of space. Some of them, very few, offer a great insight into some of the most technical and forward-thinking minds in the industry, and I’m not denying that those are important.
But when you see ‘Top 50 experts weigh in on..‘ floating around on LinkedIn or some random Twitter account, we all know it’s BS. I’ll admit, I’ve partaken in these articles before, and what’s been gained out of them has been very minimal.
You get a free link and a smug picture of yourself on an article that will no doubt be widely shared, but no one will read. So let’s stop creating this dribble. We all know what these articles are created for, and it’s not there for the benefit of the experts, or the people reading it – not really.
Stop posting on free sites like Social Media Today
This is the kind of prostitution that makes people want to jump out of windows on a dark day in February.
A little like mammoth industry expert articles, posting your 500 word piece on sites like Social Media Today gains you the same level of respect as an old man that coughs every now and again in the cinema – everyone can hear him, but no one really wants to acknowledge him. No one wants to help. No one cares.
Like before, it gains a free link and possibly a few new followers on Twitter, but no one reads into that stuff. It just looks good on a Twitter feed, and that’s not enough justification for anything to exist.
Stop pretending that there are SEO rockstars
Any industry will (or should) have its personalities, the ones that people look up to for their insight, experience and friendliness outside of the office or conference.
Let’s face it, while there are certainly several names whom do qualify, more often than not however, at least at conferences, you get these half-drunk David Brent types (usually SEO salesmen) stalking the floors proclaiming to have the latest content marketing tactics for ‘SEO domination’, but instead are flogging’ the same old rather expensive silver bullets.
Either that, or you get people like Boz from iGaming Bandits who famously snorted a bag full of something special before his brilliant and entirely quotable keynote speech in Amsterdam.
This doesn’t make either of them great though. It just makes them twats.
Let’s kill the SEO egos in 2016!