Marketing Archives - Sam Harrelson

What is Slop?

Sam Harrelson on July 12, 2024

This is a fantastic post from Garbage Day (a newsletter I always enjoy) on the concept of “slop.” If you haven’t already, you will probably hear that term in various contexts soon (if you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably encountered “AI Slop” from weirdly generated pictures of Jesus at a poker match with dogs, etc).

The basic concept is that we’re all doing the work of content production as once mainstreamed media continues to crumble and (d)evolve as studios, businesses, influencers, and record labels struggle for relevancy. However, your 100 posts that are fully SEO friendly with the right hashtags and AI-generated thoughts to promote your new business or side hustle are just… noise.

“Slop,” if you will. Like Taylor Swift Slop when she churns out alternative versions of her songs.

Slop isn’t inherently negative, but it’s not doing much to further the discovery or memory of your brand (whether you’re marketing a business or posting images from your vacation on your Reels).

Intentional Marketing will be a buzzword as we lurch towards election season and the Fall here in the USA if not well into 2025. Don’t post more. Post better and consume intentionally to decrease the slop effect.

More slop for the void:

The fix for all of this seems obvious and, unfortunately, impossible, at least right now. It has to come from us, the user, the viewer, the consumer, and there’s a lot of us now. We have to be the ones to demand that we all make less, aim smaller, be more deliberate about what we consume, and find new ways of funding — and distributing — what we do make.

Do What You Do Well (Unlike YouTube)

Sam Harrelson on July 11, 2024

YouTube Shorts and these voiceovers are a mistake, in my opinion. YouTube does a few things very well. Long form videos. Discovery marketing. Algorithmic suggestions that draw people in to long binges of watching.

You don’t need to chase something that you think is a market driver if it’s not a core competency.

Do what you do and do it very well and the market will reward you long-term. These short-term plays expend resources and revenues.

YouTube Shorts adds TikTok-style artificial voiceovers – The Verge:

YouTube has announced a set of new features for YouTube Shorts, some of which are available now, like a new text-to-speech video narration that lets you add an artificial voiceover. On TikTok, those are the sometimes startlingly robotic voices that you hear a lot on videos with something to promote.

What Should You Blog About?

Sam Harrelson on June 29, 2024

Obviously, I don’t care about niche blogging and I advise my clients to do likewise. Just write. That’s all. Interest will find you. I do marketing, but you wouldn’t know it if you didn’t know it.

Be interesting. That’s where the real success lies.

Life Under Billionaires Systems and Blogging – 3 Threads – Curtis McHale:

While many people say that you need to stick with a niche to grow your audience, I wonder if that killed blogging. I’m in fact working on a longer piece on that topic specifically. When everyone was trying to be the next big blog so that they could just become a blogger going niche may have been the best advice for a business. I’m not sure it was ever the best advice for the writer though.

Popular Science No Longer Publishing Magazine

Sam Harrelson on November 28, 2023

I spent many hours reading Popular Science as a young person (and into college) in the high school library and sharing amazing stories with friends. I understand the business side of this, but it still feels to me like we’re losing something very valuable…

After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer offer a magazine – The Verge:

After 151 years, Popular Science will no longer be available to purchase as a magazine. In a statement to The Verge, Cathy Hebert, the communications director for PopSci owner Recurrent Ventures, says the outlet needs to “evolve” beyond its magazine product, which published its first all-digital issue in 2021.

What Happens to the Web Now?

Sam Harrelson on June 27, 2023

Artificial Intelligence might usher in something like a return to curated web experiences. This article is presented in a very “anti-AI” posture, but it also raises the idea that what happens to the web after AI completely saturates online content (and discovery through search and googling, etc.) is a realization that humans are pretty good at curating stuff for other humans.

Hence, making a Spotify playlist for someone special is still just as engaging as when we used cassette tapes in the 80s and 90s to do the same.

My personal wish is that we all go back to the notion of personal blogging or at least small and niche online communities with things like guestbooks (go sign mine… just set up today!) and Blogrolls to point us in interesting directions rather than relying on TikTok’s algorithms…

AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born – The Verge:

This is the same complaint identified by Stack Overflow’s mods: that AI-generated misinformation is insidious because it’s often invisible. It’s fluent but not grounded in real-world experience, and so it takes time and expertise to unpick. If machine-generated content supplants human authorship, it would be hard — impossible, even — to fully map the damage. And yes, people are plentiful sources of misinformation, too, but if AI systems also choke out the platforms where human expertise currently thrives, then there will be less opportunity to remedy our collective errors.

Planning Out Social Media in 2023

Sam Harrelson on December 30, 2022

I’m constantly on the fence about pre-planning or pre-scheduling too many marketing posts ahead of time on social media. It’s handy, for sure. However, given that events happen without warning, there are real risks that could make whatever you’re trying to do look incredibly out-of-touch.

However, there is a benefit to having a month (or week) long agenda of posts to help keep you or your team on track. Social media is a platform that often rewards spontaneity, and you should be building that into marketing efforts. But it would be best if you had a foundation on which to grow, and a good plan can get you there.

For example, I stumbled upon a free monthlong planner for social media posts in January 2023 from Plann. There is any number of these out there. Still, the benefit is that these calendars take away the guesswork and produce dozens of content pieces that can be used across social networks, promotional materials, videos, recaps, etc.

So spend some time thinking and planning while allowing your marketing efforts to remain responsive and flexible in 2023!

Too Much Choice and Not Enough Solutions

Sam Harrelson on April 14, 2021

Whether you’re telling the world about your church, selling products or sharing experiences, your website is probably not doing the job you think you hired it to do.

I’m a big fan of the “jobs to be done” philosophy of “customer experience” marketing (again, doesn’t matter if you think you have “customers” or not… you do… time is the biggest asset we all have).

Your church / business / group’s website, social media, and all of its messaging should be focused on helping your “customers” identified problems instead of just giving headshots of your directors.

Good post here laying out the issues of too many choices and not any real solutions:

People respond best to a small handful of tailored choices presented to them on a silver platter.That’s why each page should have one Call to Action, and it should be tailored to the content the user chose to read/watch/listen to.That’s why you should intentionally design content marketing funnels.That’s why you should have landing pages for specific products and specific audiences.

Source: Why Don’t People Buy: Too Much Choice – Stacking the Bricks

Maya Angelou’s Partnership with Hallmark

Sam Harrelson on April 11, 2021

I’d forgotten about this completely… fascinating read:

Billy Collins, then U.S. Poet Laureate and a fellow Random House writer, questioned Angelou’s partnership with Hallmark, the largest manufacturer of greeting cards in the United States and, among the literati, commonly associated with trite expressions.

“It lowers the understanding of what poetry actually can do,” Collins said to the Associated Press. “Hallmark cards has always been a common phrase to describe verse that is really less than poetry because it is sentimental and unoriginal.”

Source: Why Maya Angelou Partnered with Hallmark | The National Endowment for the Humanities

“Wait, you’re playing Pac-Man?”

Sam Harrelson on January 12, 2021

We finished up with our science lesson this morning and sat down at the kitchen table for a snack. This is usually when the five-year-old has “tablet time” (we’re not the type of parents that abides by the “Screen Time!” mantra or severely restricts device usage…).

As I was putting snacks out, I noticed he was playing Pac-Man. PAC-MAN. “Wait, you’re playing Pac-Man?” I asked in that sort of parental stunned manner that even a five-year-old recognizes as a question that warranted an immediate response. “What is Pac-Man?” he responded. I’d loaded a few classic games on his tablet a few weeks ago but didn’t think he’d necessarily take to any of them just yet.

“You’re playing it!” I said. “Oh, he said… I call it Bubble-Eater.” Fair enough.

I sat down and we enjoyed some Pac-Man together. He’s almost better than I was as a middle schooler emptying quarters into the Pac-Man machine at our local skating rink on a Friday night. It’s been a while.

This all makes me reflect on how we often put emphasis on things that really don’t matter in our marketing. Our son doesn’t care about the name “Pac-Man” but enjoys the experience, the music, and the sound effects. If you’re of a certain age, you can close your eyes and imagine those sound effects right now.

Often when I’m working with clients on a new project, there will be unlimited amounts of time and energy spent on seemingly massive details that in the end only matter to the actual organization (or more often, specific committee members).

In reality, it’s the sound effects that stick with people and transcend generations. Focus on the details that matter and not the ones that you think matter. “I know my business better than anyone” is often the death knell of a marketing campaign.