Trading Commodities

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Trading Commodities

One of the unsettling byproducts of the internet, particularly the “echosphere”, is that everything gets commoditized.

Anyone can use social media to stake a claim on a personal or corporate brand. The problem is, social media also allows everyone else to stake a claim on their own brand.

Kevin Kelly, in his 2008 blog post “Better than Free” remarked:

When copies are super abundant, they become worthless.

When copies are super abundant, stuff which can’t be copied becomes scarce and valuable.

Kelly was speaking of digital goods like ebooks, movies, music, and the like, but the same is true of anything communicated digitally, including content and branded content.

We are drowning in brands: corporate, product, and personal. When everything has a brand, what is the value of brand? Branding, absent some externality, becomes a commodity.

Commodity Content

The fact that brands are a commodity is difficult for many marketers to come to terms with, so they have slowly moved away from branding to content. Branded content, content strategies, and other buzzword laden constructions including content were widely shared, linked, and commented upon in 2010.

The problem is, content has also become a commodity.

It has never been easier to publish and share content with other people than it is today. You can publish anything, text, video, audio, or graphics from anywhere in the world in seconds.

We are drowning in content. There is more content published daily than we would ever have time to consume. That pushes the value of content to nothing, because no one has the time or attention span to devote to all of it.

This is simple economics.

Commodity Trading

In a sense, we have all become commodity traders.

Commodities are sold in bulk; heads of cattle, bushels of corn, or ounces of Gold. They are also sold at prevailing market rates, which is defined as whatever the market will pay for a bulk unit of the commodity. It changes daily, depending on market outlook, externalities like weather, perceived scarcity, etc.

So what is the market value of a noise of blog posts? A boob of videos? A drone of podcasts?

Nothing.

No one really wants more brands, or more content. Awash in both, more of the same is barely worth our attention.

Attention Grabbing Headline!

In order to get people’s attention, we have to circle back to the externalities that lend scarcity and value to the content we are producing.

What are those externalities? Kelly outlined 8 things which cannot be copied (generatives). These are externalities that cannot be transmitted over the web, that add value to things which have no value. While all 8 are important, I think they can be summed up as follows:

· Analysis

· Personalization

· Humanization

What is missing in the flotsam of content is answering the question: “Why is X important?“

Strong analysis and interpretation of complex ideas, in an easily digestible format, would go a long way towards adding value to content which would otherwise not merit much attention.

Another question which is often overlooked is “Why does this relate to me?”

There are thousands of posts on using social media for this or that agenda, blogging for this or that outcome…content by numbers, really.

Kelly uses “personalization” as a synonym for “customization”, but that is not necessarily the case. You can add value to even the most bland blogging or social media strategy platitudes if you relate it back to your own experiences, or relate it to your audience experiences in a deep and personal way.

The final question that often goes unanswered is “Who is this person?”

It’s been fashionable to create niche blogs and content in an attempt to make a sale. The result is content which is bland, inauthentic, and forgettable. You can add value to your readers if you simply act like a human being, and treat them like human beings. Drop the pitch and connect, okay?

Some people have advocated moving towards a “premium content” model to erect a toll bridge around their content, giving their content value because of its scarcity. This may work for temporarily, but premium content would have to be truly valuable in one of these other ways to hold someone’s attention.

The economics of content are clear. Content is a commodity, but you don’t have to be commoditized.

What are your thoughts?