Pay close attention to these two trends when it comes to making your own media or working for an organization: microcontent and hyperlocal media. I believe that these two segments will become the leverage point where people can create meaningful content, and where media can remain social, useful, personal, and impactful. Let’s explain this just a little more, so that I don’t lose anyone along the way.
Microcontent: Think “small bites.”
First off, by microcontent, I mean really small bites of content. I mean things a little bigger than your average Twitter post. I mean piece of information that are short, succinct, and useful, either directly or in a remashed way. For instance, what if you were writing fiction for a cell phone? It’d obviously have to be much smaller. Flash fiction. Nothing new, and yet, even smaller format. Micro fiction. Further, what would nonfiction look like in this format? Even smaller, that’s what. Hint: my typical blog post is too big to be microcontent.
Unless. you. chop. it. up.
Maybe each sub-heading becomes a segment, a blog post, a standalone thing. If so, what should I do differently? Add tagging to each micro segment? Yes. Add contact info somehow to the base of every microsegment? Yes. NOW you get the sense of what needs to be considered with microformatting.
Video? Smaller. Faster. Shorter. Make intros faster. Make outros faster. Make it segments I can chunk into other video clusters. Make it something non-repetitive. Cut down the intro so I can consume a lot of them quickly.
Hyperlocal Media
It’s not good enough to do a news article about Massachusetts. I need to know how Andyman coffee stayed alive while three other coffee shops died. I want to know why my town wants to slice $1,000,000 out of the budget as a tax cut, which will just put all these other services at a deficit right out of the gate.
Make your media matter to a locale. Make at least SOME of your media matter to a locale. This is how you win against Google. This is how you drive something of value. And no, there aren’t really easy-to-follow business models for this kind of hyperlocal media just yet. Some of the earlier frontrunners crapped the bed when they tried. But don’t give up. There’s a way to make it work, and it must.
Look at YOUR Media
And also the media you consume. Does this make a difference? Do you see the value in having small, short, brief, mash-able content? Is your stuff somehow NOT conducive to this? Why? What is it about your stuff that couldn’t/shouldn’t be shoved down smaller? Why aren’t you covering your immediate neighborhood in your media?
What do you think about all this?
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