Thinking of escaping the impending crowdsourced embarrassing crap deluge? There’s no point.

Content is king supposedly. For years now, we’ve been making videos, music, blogs, whatever and getting these things out there. We may be doing this for fun, self-promotion or a genuine desire to inform, but our friends in the Marketing Dept want in. They have been getting all excited about ‘content marketing’ this last while (probably prompted by the changes in how Google ranks content online – basically, the good stuff will rise to the top). However, one agency reckons as the Marketing Dept scrabble to make great content, we’re about to be hit by a deluge… of crap.

A Year Offline. With this impending crap deluge, now might be a good time to take a year offline *gasp*. Paul Miller left the internet for a year: “I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was ‘corrupting my soul’.” However, his 12 months did not result in any spiritual epiphanies and, perhaps not entirely unexpectedly, he concludes that “the internet isn’t an individual pursuit, it’s something we do with each other. The internet is where people are.”

Your internet past is ‘not embarrassing’.  And if the internet is where people are and these people are creating content, then chances are some of that stuff will be ill-judged, embarrassing or even potentially damaging. I’ve sometimes thought about all of the comments, tweets, status updates, blog posts and so on that I’ve generated over the years and cringed a little. Kyle Wagner reckons we should just ‘get over it’ and “all that earnesty really betrays is that you’re a human being with human feelings”. Let’s see how that flies with the recruiters skulking around LinkedIn…

Stop giving your money to rich people on Kickstarter. Zack Braff has managed to raise over $2M to finance a film via crowd-sourcing service Kickstarter. Traditionally a community where artists/creatives/developers could tap their friends and interested parties for cash upfront to finance small projects, the tool is being used by established types. Time Warner managed to raise over $5M to greenlight a Veronica Mars film. Alan Jones writes regretfully that fans are saying “it’s OK for rich people to eliminate the factor of risk”. Meanwhile Cameron Brady-Turner reckons we should stop beating on Braff and even thank him for drawing attention to crowdsourced funding.

See you in seven.

_____

Enda Guinan is a consultant and trainer offering advice on social media strategy and product delivery for individuals and small businesses. Get in touch to see how you can make the best use of your time and energy as you put together your social media plans.