This post was originally written by Tom De Baere on his blog, B2B Marketing Experiences

Curated Content bannerWhat happened in 2014 in the field of digital marketing can best be compared with the Law of Bernoulli.

This law is very simple to understand: put your foot on a water hose and turn on the tap. What happens next, in my imagination,  is a bubble of water that appears in the hose, just like in the Tom & Jerry cartoons from my childhood. On one side of the bubble, the pressure is higher. And on the other side, at the far end, only a little bit of water comes out. Take your foot of the water hose, and “voilà”, there is again plenty of water. Agreed, Bernoulli’s law is more complex than that, but this is supposed to be Bernoulli’s law “for dummies”.

In 2014, we’ve seen that Facebook started putting both feet firmly on our social media water hoses.Where we used to enjoy delicious free organic reach for our content, with “Facebook Zero” that organic reach came to a standstill. If we want to reach our Facebook friends as a brand, an hose them down with our updates, we’ll have to pay “please-get-your-foot-of-the-water-hose”-money to Facebook.

What is less known is that not only Facebook is doing this. Other titans like Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn are taking steps in this direction.

Why do they do that? Obviously it comes down to money.

But it’s about more than just money …

Data tsunamis can’t get through water hoses

When someone steps on such a water hose, in my cartoon-imagination, a gigantic water bubble is formed, which can burst any moment. This bubble represents the gigantic data-pressure that we all together create every day.

We’re Instagramming, Facebooking, Blogging, Pinning and Google+’ing until we drop.

According to IBM, we produce a sloppy 2.5 Exabyte per day. Such Exabyte’s are hard to picture. It corresponds to the entire Netflix catalog, streamed 8,000 times, every day. And in 2015, we’ve entered the year of the “Zettabyte” says Cisco. Such Zettabyte may sound like the latest mosquito ointment, but a Zettabyte corresponds to the same Netflix streaming 250 billion DVD movies per year over the Internet.

At a certain point it is impossible for people to even consume all that content. Mark Schaeffer, a content marketing guru from the US, even talks about a “content shock.”

For brands, today it has become really difficult or even impossible to catch the attention of buyers. Unless you have a lot of money of course. Then you have the budget to create the best content, and you can additionally throw in a lot of money to get your content seen. But for small brands, it has become ‘darn difficult’.

You can compare it to trying to drink from a water hydrant. Pleasant for consumers, but painful for brands.

You realize that such a huge amount of content can not possibly be unleashed on your social feed or search results without a proper filter. Sounds normal you think, and I agree with you: it is normal today.

But in 2014 we saw something new. Many of these social networks have made significant changes that herald something completely different. The best-known measures in 2014 were Facebook with their “Facebook Zero“, “click-bait headlines” and “like-gating”, Google with Hummingbird & Panda (updates  to their search algorithms), and Twitter announced to start filtering on … Relevance .

Yes, relevance, with a capital ‘R’…. read more

Cheryl Treleaven

Cheryl Treleaven

Principal

Engaging your customers is at the heart of successful marketing programs. For more than 20 years, Cheryl has been building and executing content and thought leadership strategies designed to do just that. She is excited to be applying that well-honed skill to a help companies like Microsoft, Cisco, 3M, Intel, Capital One and Barclaycard tap into their stakeholder communities and build sophisticated content strategies.

Her experience base spans a range of industries – from technology and financial services to retail, travel, consumer products and healthcare. Cheryl has served as an integral member of her clients’ marketing teams, providing counsel on marketing and brand strategy, thought leadership, media relations, product introductions, and event management.

Prior to joining ComBlu, Cheryl spent 10 years leading corporate marketing for large, complex organizations.