Digital content used to run on volume.
No longer.
I’ve done volume work before — and I have peers who still do. Most clients didn’t care about the quality as long as we published by the deadline; the goal was to shovel as much content as possible into Google’s hungry maw like coal into a steamship boiler.
Volume was one of the biggest keys to gaming the search engines for rankings and search traffic. AI has changed all of that. Suddenly, volume (at a baseline of quality) is available to everyone.
The game has changed. Now you need to create purpose-driven content.
The Market is Changing
Content can no longer just be functional. The right information in the proper format used to be enough. Now the market wants something more.
We’re in the middle of a change in the way people consume content. Google created the market we’ve had for the last two decades … and indirectly, it created the current upheaval in that market.
The last 20 or so years — basically the entirety of content marketing’s success — have been dominated by Google visibility. The entire content marketing strategy of authority and authenticity (that we’ve preached and others have copied) leveraged search.
Marketers wrote for the algorithm. To be successful, you had to be seen on Google. To be seen on Google, you created a large volume of relevant content that matched the content appetite you thought your audience had. The point was always to appeal to people, but people were primarily a measurement tool for Google’s interest in your site.
This has already been changing, but OpenAI and ChatGPT have accelerated this content model’s demise over the last couple of years. AI is great for generating large amounts of functional content … but it falls flat when it comes to understanding the purpose of that content.
AI can answer a question. But it can’t make you care. It’s not agile when it comes to new information, and it can’t bring personal nuance to the table. That requires a human touch. And Google is no longer good at providing that information either.
Google has trained marketers, intentionally or otherwise, to create copycat content. AI generates content based on the content it sees and creates more copycat content. This content appeals to Google Search’s lowest common denominator and gets noticed by gaming the algorithm, whether by volume, keyword frequency, or any other major search ranking factor. And the explosion of copycat content at scale has made Google results bad enough that people are looking elsewhere.
Dmitri Brereton’s 2022 post “Google Search Is Dying” explains why:
The SEO marketers gaming their way to the top of every Google search result might as well be robots. Everything is commercialized. Someone’s always trying to sell you something. Whether they’re a bot or human, they are decidedly fake.
So how can we regain authenticity? What if you want to know what a genuine real life human being thinks about the latest Lenovo laptop?
You append “reddit” to your query (or hacker news, or stack overflow, or some other community you trust).
Purpose-driven content can’t feel artificial. It has to match your audience’s intention. Reddit posts are real people answering real questions with real answers, not the top 10 results on the relevant Google SERP blended into a smoothie and topped with an affiliate link. That’s why Reddit is winning the search game. And it’s where the opportunity lies for the next frontier of digital marketing.
Why Care About Purpose-Driven Content?
- Authenticity and authority: Create content for yourself first and no one will trust you. To build a rapport with your audience and prove that you’re a trustworthy source, create content to match their intention and keep their purpose in mind as you build the content.
- Google authority: There’s a reason Google added “Experience” to their search quality guidelines; it’s one of the few things that can make your content stand out and “prove” its value, and AI can’t replicate it.
- Audience connection: People are hunting for novelty, for interesting and unique perspectives, for real-world experience, for relevance and value. Purpose-driven content brings at least one of those things to the table and leaves them satisfied, not frustrated.
- Social media: Want to build a social media audience? Bring something differentiated to the table. Don’t regurgitate the same old talking points; purpose-driven content will make your voice stand out from the crowd.
- List building and conversion: Why should people give you their time and their personal information? Because you have something valuable, relevant and useful to them. Without that, they won’t sign up.
How Do You Create Purpose-Driven Content?
Create with a reason, don’t create just to create. We’re marketers. We aren’t just creating art for art’s sake; it needs to drive action, or as David Ogilvy says, “it isn’t creative.” We use PII™ to help inspire our creation; content that promotes the brand, informs the audience, and inspires interaction.
There are three major ways to make sure your content achieves these goals.
Have a Superlative For Your Audience
If you don’t know what makes your message worthy of people listening to you and doing business with you, they don’t either. They need to be able to recognize that what you’re saying has value. Define a superlative for what makes your message special.
Your superlative can be anything — from “most convenient” or “cheapest” to “most technologically interesting” or “closest to the original recipe.” Tractor Supply is the most farmer-friendly store. Nike understands the athlete’s mindset the best. Figure out what makes you you.
Differentiate Yourself
That superlative is a thread that runs through everything you create. In our case, we lean on the idea of “digital marketing for everyone else” as our differentiator — every piece of content we create is meant to help people who aren’t full-time digital marketers find business success in the current marketing environment. Our audience tells us that this message is worth listening to. It gives us a voice that stands out in a sea of mediocrity and copycat content.
Differentiation doesn’t mean you need functionally unique content; Nike and Reebok sneakers aren’t that far apart. But their superlatives make all the difference.
Create for You and Your Audience, Not the Platform
If you slavishly follow the algorithm, you’re not creating purpose-driven content. Algorithms change, and they don’t care.
Audience preferences change over time too, but much slower — and if you’re tuned in to them, you’ll be able to evolve. Your tribe will find you if you’re creating interesting, relevant content. They won’t if you’re just creating slop they can get anywhere. When we started, our primary content efforts were focused on written text and podcasts. Today, we include social media, video, SMS and AI.
Real-World Example: Greg Titian
Greg Titian is the founder and owner of the YouTube channel How to Drink. His channel is devoted to cocktails (and other drinks). As a cocktail hobbyist, I follow a lot of these channels. But Titian’s is a little different: he’s never been a bartender (and he’s clear about that).
A video editor and producer, Titian decided to turn his hobby into a side gig in 2015. His superlative could be called “most approachable.” Unlike most cocktail channels, he comes across as an everyman, leaning on research and outside experts to lend credibility to his visually stunning presentations. There’s a sense of discovery to his creations — not just lecturing.
The How to Drink channel uses all three of the tips we mentioned above … and they’ve paid dividends. The channel has 1.7 million subscribers. Why? Because Greg Titian creates purpose-driven content, and his audience loves him for it.
You can too if you follow these steps.
Create with Purpose
The path forward for digital marketing is purpose-driven content. Create for your audience, not your platform, and have a genuine, differentiated offering for them. Need a hand? We can help. We do this sort of work for our clients all the time — to say nothing of what we create ourselves. Just drop us a line, anytime.
Best Regards,
David Brandon
Copywriter
Rainmaker Digital Services