Marketing in the Flow by JG.

gross:

My friend Noah wrote about the need to re-think content systems in a networked era based on some really smart thoughts that came from danah boyd and Robin Sloan. Noah’s basic argument is we are moving from a web world that was dominated by stock content and websites to flow content and a world of endless streams.

We can see this pretty clearly with the growth of Twitter, Facebook and, on a smaller, but important behavioral scale, Tumblr. What all these systems allow for is reading and writing within the same interface, giving people a space to broker ideas and content between networks, creating flow from this hybrid consumption/production act. This is very different from the stock world we are used to, where reading happened on sites like the New York Times, full of stock content, and “writing” happened in a totally separate space, whether it was our personal blog, email or over a coffee with a friend. 

So to the point on marketing: Why is this a really important change to understand? I’ve got a few thoughts. First and foremost, the world of display advertising, which the web has been building up for the last fifteen years or so, doesn’t fit really well into the flow (literally and figuratively). In a Flow world, we use our preference graph to create a natural filter for the content we want to consume and exchange. What this means is flow-based marketing is favored by the ability to be easily consumed and, ideally, easily filtered through our graph. To be relevant in Flow, the medium requests content that can create reception in a world dominated by relevant messages. danah boyd says it well here: 

Making content work in a networked era is going to be about living in the streams, consuming and producing alongside “customers”—consuming to understand, producing to be relevant.

This is a big shift for brands, but I’m starting to see it. Brands are seeing content as a valuable part of their overall online spend. I’m delighted by this because I don’t believe the web scales as a medium through more display banner ads.  

What type of content should be created? This is where it gets a bit more interesting and most likely not what a marketer wants to hear. It is not about creating the perfect message or the perfect piece of content from the beginning. The medium is the judge and it allows for us to test and learn, to iterate, to push all sorts of content. To understand what people are interested in takes time to gather that reception. Find ways into the streams of others and you have awareness and brand advertising at a level that the web hasn’t seen to date.