Thursday April 24, 2014

The Internet needs Content. Create!

For thousands of years libraries were known to be the one place you could access books and other reads from. You had to physically go to access the information. There wasn’t an alternative of where to get resources to study for your exams for example or looking for the correct spelling and pronunciation of a word other than the dictionary that is in the library. “The book in the library says this! We can’t do that! …” I can imagine some library loyalist saying that to defend what he had read in the library arguing with someone who had not read from a book in the library but was probably right!

And so people had made it cool to have a large collection of books kept safely in a certain shelf in the house where only fathers for example could access the books. It is even still a common thing to flip the cover of a book and find the writings “XXXX family library” In short, there is satisfaction in having content close to you and even claiming to own it either because you bought the book or you think it is too complex for other people to access and read and so should be marked as yours only.

However, over the past two decades and in the latter one especially, the internet has changed how content is made, who makes it and how it is shared amongst people. Each and every day, people from different parts of the world are creating new content for the internet in a rate and pace that no one can control. This content is also mutating fast and reproducing at an uncontainable rate. Content is the new hot cake commodity. If packaged and presented well of course.

The internet has space for all the books each and every single person in this world currently plus the next two generations and even more can write. What’s even more interesting is how everyone is at liberty to create the kind of content that they are comfortable with. From music, movies, jokes, academic papers, photos, eBooks to audio clips, the internet contains information in software form about virtually everything that there is.  The content that people are currently creating for the internet has to be presented in a specific form that has to appeal to the market it is targeted for.

The content on the internet is created for everyone though it would be safe to also say that it is also more specifically made for the “digital audience” or the “digital consumer”. The digital audience (plural for digital consumer) wants information presented to them in a certain manner. There are certain places within the digital space itself (the internet in this regard) where the digital audience can be reached at and engaged. Social media platforms have proved to be the best place to meet and engage the digital audience from. It is here where the digital audience want to be given content about new things or the same old things but in a different more sensible way.  The handing over of content to the digital consumer is very different to the handing over of content to the hard cover book lover for example.

Simply put, the digital audience is composed of people with considerable cognitive capability. This group of people does not want to be bored by observations about the superficial manifestations of things but more on what penetrates the subject being discussed emotionally or intellectually. The digital consumer is concerned with how something works and not what it is. This, for those of us with business minds is the new area to invest in. The resources one needs to invest in this business are an open-mind, good interpersonal and presentation skills plus swiftness and craftiness in producing whatever it is you have specialized in. The internet needs content, create! So invest, now that you know the resources you will need. What’s even better with this kind of digital content is that you do not need the approval of anyone, you can self publish it! And the cost of this is becoming cheaper by the day.

What Lies in the future for the three C’s? (Communication, Competition and Commerce) in relation to the internet?