Authenticity Is Now More Important Than Ever During the Coronavirus

I’ve just watched an article on the BBC News that British Premier League Footballers are turning to the internet during this lockdown period.  They are running training tips, telling bedtime stories, they are calling fans.

The actor, Patrick Stewart, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Stewart who plays Jean-Luc Picard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Luc_Picard in Star Trek is reading sonnets on his Twitter page https://twitter.com/SirPatStew

I’ve read on Linkedin the “hack” if you want to get a job you start a Podcast.  What you do is you start a Podcast and then invite the managers you want to work for onto the Podcast.  It’s that simple, so the posts go.

Everybody, has woken up to the fact, that we really, really live our lives on-line and to reach our buyers, fans, next manager, we need to be online as well and creating content.

But like every training company, every footballer, every salesperson, every job seeker is online this is going to release a Tsunami of content.

Mark Schaefer, always ahead of his time, wrote in 2004 about “Content Shock” https://businessesgrow.com/2014/01/06/content-shock/ this is the situation where there is just too much content.  The content shock term is usually seized upon by advertisers to try and argue that the best way to break through the noise is to look at adverts rather than consume content.

I’m sure if your children were given the choice, have a bedtime story read to them by a footballer or have adverts read to them, they will take the footballer every time.

In a pre-Covid19 world, ordinary corporate content was fine, you could get away with it.  Not today, it will get lost.  That 2,000 world white paper? Nobody cared before Covid19, nobody will care now.

The terrible situation with Covid19 means that with a third of the world in lockdown, we could possibly get to a situation where there is just too much content.  But wait a minute, how is it that I know about Mark Schaefer?

Because he creates great content.

And there lies the trick, call it a hack if you will.

Your content needs to be interesting, different, educational, tell me something I don’t know.  But most of all it has to be authentic.

Authentic means it comes from your heart and its created by your head.

It does not come from marketing, it does not come because somebody has told you to do it.  It comes from your own inspiration.

So the secret to great content, great selling, great marketing and great recruitment in a Covid19 world is authentic content. 

My inbox has been flooded with compassionate messages from retailers, businesses and SaaS vendors expressing their concern about the effect COVID-19 is having, assuring customers or subscribers about what they’re doing to keep everyone safe. Take time to talk with your executives and teams about extra things you might do with your marketing to help everyone get through the next weeks and months. If you’re in management or a member of a team that’s going through radical changes, these steps can help you translate your concern to action.