I love tech. I always have. As I look around my current work-from-home set-up, I’m surrounded by fancy bits of technology that each play their part in making my day more efficient/ productive/ enjoyable/ distracting (delete as applicable).
I’m not on my own. Most business people have access to technical wizardry that would have been a pipedream five years ago. You know the well-worn example of your iPhone having more processing power than the computer that guided the Apollo 11 space programme (over 100,000 times, actually)? The same can be said for the tools we have at our fingertips to create new content – we’ve never had it so good.
It stands to reason that our business lives are being filled up with content. All we need is a phone and someone who can perform some rudimentary editing on a free-to-download tool, and we have ourselves some video content to share. Likewise, the same homegrown formula can be used to create eye-catching visuals on tools like Canva or record podcasts using your phone/tablet/laptop.
Good news, right? Well, maybe. As has always been the case with content creation, quality and quantity have a part to play.
Just because we CAN create videos or other content doesn’t mean we SHOULD.
What’s the purpose? Who are we serving by adding more noise into the mix? How do we ensure that ours gets noticed (and actioned) for the right reasons?
Remember ‘Death by PowerPoint’? For a time, you couldn’t scroll through LinkedIn or open a business magazine without commentators offering their opinions on how ‘PowerPoint makes us stupid’. Eventually, the smart people figured out it had nothing to do with the software and everything to do with content creators. ‘Death by PowerPoint’ happened because there were too many unskilled people creating too many PowerPoint decks, each of which was laden with too much unfocused information and being thrown at audiences that quickly lost the will to live.
The problem was a lack of skill, understanding and filter. The weapon of choice at the time happened to be PowerPoint, but it could have quite easily have been Apple’s Keynote.
We need to take lessons from the communication headaches of history. How do we avoid ‘Death by iPhone-captured video’ or ‘Death by Canva’? I believe it’s about getting the basics right. Storytelling is an art that needs to be understood and harnessed to create great content. Understanding audiences and crafting content to meet their specific needs is not a throwing mud-at-the-wall exercise but one should be carefully and pragmatically planned. And sharing content that drives action? Again, that takes time, patience and, dare I say it, experience.
Creating valuable content doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to follow a robust process. Failure to do so will lead to ‘Death by [insert your favourite tech here]’.
RECOMMENDED READING
- Storytelling Training:
https://eyeful-archive.eyefulpresentations.com/presentation-training-courses/ - Joining The Dots – Presentation Storytelling:
https://eyeful-archive.eyefulpresentations.com/presentation-solutions/presentation-storytelling/ - The Eyeful Process:
https://eyeful-archive.eyefulpresentations.com/how-we-do-it/
