Today I received a notice from Facebook that I haven't posted anything on one of my pages for 20 days, it was a gentle reminder that in a world which is daily blizzard of digital content I'm letting the side down. Fine, I'll write something but I can't help but feeling I'm falling into the trap of mums who speak loudly in playgrounds at their children, in what is a rather clumsy way of letting people know they're good parents. We all know sniffing your friends shoe, who's just stepped in dog poo, isn't a great idea, but hey, they broadcast it to let you know they're taking care of business. Dog's business.
So, here I am taking care of business, but to be frank what with The Budget, Trump, Sutton UTD playing Arsenal, and Barcelona becoming a footballing Phoenix rising from The Champion's League flames...there hasn't been anything to say. And so I find myself in the position of an awful lot of people who feel like that have to make their digital mark, and yet haven't got any real insight or news to give us. And that brings me to digital marketing and the enormous terra byte per millisecond crap that is punted in all directions about how to market yourself in a digital space. They are quite incredible posts - they continue uninterrupted for maybe 1000 words and offer absolutely nothing. Nothing about digital. Nothing about life. And nothing about how they can live with themselves.
Type in Top Ten Digital marketing Tips and you'll get people ranking on the first page for suggesting to make your site work on all devices. That's a bit like saying don't forget to take the lid off your pen. I think everyone is across the mobile thingy by now - my site works on mobile, my plumber's site works on mobile. I need to know how to get more people than him to it. Then there's another guy writing about how not to forget Landing Pages. Really? First Impressions? Wow, hang on I'll write that down. But the one I love the most is the suggestion to write 'long-lasting content' so that people will be more likely to interact with it overtime. What? Until I read that I was simply going to waffle on about what happened to me today, and the impact of the National Insurance hike.
Real insightful guidance's impossible to come by because so many people are talking and nobody is listening, but there's an exception that and it's
Moz. They didn't pay me to write that - let's face it: it would have been ridiculous if they had; I don't want a link, and me writing it here is going to do very little. But they are constant source of intelligent debate and information, their blog and Whiteboard Fridays should be staples of everyone's digital diet, but the best bit for me is Rand Fishkin. That guy must be super busy but he's replied to my speculative emails unfashionably promptly, and almost certainly for no other reason than he loves what he does.
Most others are all writing for the sake of writing. There's an art to writing on websites and that's to have loads of words on the page and say absolutely nothing of interest. I know. I just did it.
