Use Your Filth Marketing Filter to Improve Your Own – A Rant

I usually go into an angry curse-word-inducing rant every time another crummy car insurance commercial comes across my computer screen. As the “low cost” car insurance market continues to become saturated, and each company copies each other, the redundancy level skyrockets. The lack in quality and level of intrusiveness has also become more prevalent. This same scenario is happening in content marketing, and it gets me just as peeved. Here are some examples that don’t pass through the Filth Marketing Filter.

Caught In the Filter

• Invasive Webpage Marketing, does not filter. – I don’t stick around a webpage if I have to watch an advertising clip, an intrusive ad scroll or… yada yada yada. The content that could’ve provided value, and acted as a marketing tool, is never seen. BOUNCE!
• Poorly repurposed content, does not filter. The old adage, “If you can do it better,” still holds true. The problem is, fewer and fewer seem to be actually following that sage advice, and basically “cc” their content. Meh. Want to check if people are doing the same with your material? Give the company Copyscape a look, and check if others are using too much of your content when they “repurpose” it.
• Unconscious social sharing, does not filter. Sending out a Tweet purely based on the headline? Being purposefully vague with a social share? Yeah, that’s noticeable, and lazy. When you are sharing via social you are trying to provide value to your followers. You are doing them a disservice when you share something that sounds interesting, but ends up being useless or a waist of time.
• Our “shit don’t stink”, does not filter. Does your content marketing always smell like roses? Here is a hint, it doesn’t. I am guilty of this, as is everyone. There is a tendency to turn our Filth Marketing Filter off, when we are looking at our own material. Now I’m paranoid. What does this post smell like?
• Intrusive data mining advertising, does not filter. Knowing more about your buyer or audience is useful. Knowing some of their likes and dislikes can be handy as well. But be careful! Don’t dig too deep, because you will come off as creepy. Use the friendly neighbor measure. If it’s something you would be comfortable your neighbor knowing, then it’s usually okay to use that information to target market your content.
• Deceptive marketing, does not filter. The amount of information and sales tactics out there that promote trickery to get to a potential customer is HORRIBLE! Do any of you like being tricked into subscribing to an email list? Are any of you okay with clicking on an article that seems to be providing valuable information, but ends up being an obvious attempt to sell a book? Content marketing is informative marketing. The information we are providing needs to be meaty and honest. Break their trust with a gimmicky headline or slimy conversion tactic and you’ll never get a click from them again.

What’s a trend I would like to see more of?

Using our own Filth Marketing Filters to avoid bad marketing, and applying that to our professional arenas. Granted, many of us already do. However, I know that the pressure to feed the content beast and convert can cause us to slip up now and then. So consider this blog a checklist on the quality of our own content marketing. I know I will.