YIKES! Content Marketing Overload

When I was a child, a small, seemingly insignificant gesture left a lasting impression on me.

My grandmother was very interested in her ancestry. Now bear in mind, this is deep into the last century, long before computers and internet, snail mail was king and the post office was still making a profit. 

She had read that one of her ancestors may have lived in a small town in Virginia. She somehow found the address of a library in that little town and addressed a letter: To Whom It May Concern, asking about this mysterious figure from the past.

Two weeks later, she received a letter back. In beautiful cursive script, a researcher at the library detailed the painstaking effort he made to find a record of this individual. 

"Dear Madam", it began. "I received your request and with great pleasure, I now can reveal what has been found about your relative". After the lengthy description of his research, he ended by saying: "Should you have need of any other information, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am always here, at your service. Sincerely, _____________"

I still have that letter and revisit it now and again when I feel overwhelmed by the profit-driven, automated, superficial, redundant, barrage of marketing mislabeled as "making a connection". 

Don't get me wrong, I think the internet and many of the free applications we use daily to learn from and communicate with each other are amazing. I am glad to be living in this time, when while sitting in my arm chair, I can meet and converse in real time with someone across the globe.

But I am also grateful that I have seen with my own eyes the selfless passion and enthusiasm for helping a stranger and the art with which that short interaction was curated. The tactile nature and smell of the paper, the character of the individual's unique handwriting, the courtesy and decorum evident in the writer's personality, that communicated respect and sophistication. Sadly, these seem all but lost in many forms of digital exchange. But they don't have to be. 

I get that we are all attempting to build our brand, to make an impression, to gain an audience, be heard, understood and monetized. I'm in the same boat. 

But when the same Tweet goes out to every follower, when purveyors of this or that service are blindly marketing to each other. When the dissemination and consumption of "content" has replaced writing for the sake of expression, for the sheer joy of the art form... something is lost. Something valuable is disappearing from the human experience. 

 

I am not in the league of receiving hundreds of new followers each week. Nor am I on the NY Times best seller list, or deciding which TV interview to accept. If I were, perhaps I might find it impossible to answer each "Follow" with a personal message of thanks or to read and really take in what others are saying and writing about. 

If and when that day comes, it will be bittersweet. 

Until then, I will remain committed to using language as the marvelous tool that it is to communicate thought, feeling, creativity and empathy first and foremost and let that be the means by which I either sell or fail to sell my product. 

It is a delicate balance I know, when we're all trying to make a living and leave our mark. But let's not forget the "Human Factor" in all our promotions. 

There was something special about writing a letter by hand, a sensual quality that has been lost in today's "sound byte" world. But try to imagine your computer more like a pen than a cash register and maybe, just maybe, we can get back some of that precious sentimentality.

-Shane Eric Mathias