The content detectives went back to work in the urban jungle of scandalous social and egregious email. They were on the hunt for everything from marketing misdemeanors to first-class content felonies.
If you want to see the live webinar, watch it right here.
However, if you’d rather read all about it – we’re recapping all of the crimes and how to avoid them right here!
Please note: for privacy reasons, we’re not showing the original content behind the crimes in this blog.
What is a Content Crime?
A Content Crime is a frequently repeated marketing misstep that doesn’t earn attention, puts your brand in the wrong light – or simply – just doesn’t work.
Recapping Content Crimes: Social, Email & Blogging
Content crimes can pop-up anywhere (even in pop-ups ads), but we’re highlighting the big three: social, email, and blogs.
Social Content Crimes
The Not-So-Humble-Brag
The Not-So-Humble-Brag is when you’re enticing an audience with big claims that fall a little flat. While it’s meant to build credibility, the wrong brag hurts your brand. This is a common type of social post where a brand brags about all of their accomplishments – while trying to undercut that boast by saying how hard it was.
The way you avoid The Not-So-Humble-Brag is by being upfront about the cool stuff you do – rather than trying to hide in false humility.
Piggybacking
Piggybacking is the crime of taking something cool and repurposing it for your marketing goals. Whether that’s screencapping an iconic image or playing off the feeling of nostalgia, Piggybacking makes something that was once awesome mediocre.
Not only does it undermine the exciting feelings towards the original, but it hardly helps your marketing cause. The way to Piggyback right is to only make references that actually make sense for your brand and what you offer.
AI Image Spree
The AI Image Spree content crime is the painful overuse of AI-generated imagery in social posts. We all know that images help content gain reach and convert, just not images this bad.
The way you get around this crime isn’t to stop using AI images – but it’s to stop using terrible images, whether they are AI created or not.
Cross Contamination
Cross Contamination is a content crime we’ve all seen a lot. This is where you screencap a post on one social platform and then repost it to another. In theory, this is a great way to bring good content to a whole new audience – accompanied with great insight.
In practice, Cross Contamination just leads to lazy recycling of social content. If you want to cross-post well, make sure the posts are worth it and that the insight you deliver is worthwhile.
Email Content Crimes
Milking It
Milking It is an email crime where you use something trendy, way past its natural expiration date. Think of every “Gen Z” subject line in emails.
While the temptation is there to use “Demure” – ultimately, most audiences will cringe. Most times you’d probably be better off just writing it simple and straightforward.
Bait & Switch
Bait & Switch is when an email subject line promises one thing that is AMAZING…then delivers something less amazing when you open it. These subject lines are great for spiking email open rates, but are unlikely to drive real outcomes.
The better solution is to always offer clear value in the subject line – and then deliver on that value.
Personalization Gone Wrong
Personalization Gone Wrong is a content crime committed by humans and AI alike. In this crime, the content is overly personalized to the point of being inappropriate or creepy. This was exemplified by the real subject line “Streamline content updates while you grieve”.
On the other hand, good personalization is natural and not too invasive. Then when it comes time to move from personal to business, the segue is personalized, too.
Blog Content Crimes
Sacrificed for SEO
When something is Sacrificed for SEO, it’s clear that the blog author is more interested in hitting the keyword rather than matching the intent. This can look like a very long article on all aspects of the topic – rather than delivering what the search is asking for. No surprise, the best practice for this (and the SEO best practice) is to write to the intent of the search – rather than just capturing the keyword.
Deep as a Puddle
This crime is long-form content that is short on information. This comes from writing about a topic without data, research, interviews, or case studies. Ultimately, this crime comes from leaving content in a silo on its own.
To fix this, empower the content team to have enough information to write with authority on the topic.
Experience the Opal Platform Today
Want to discover why marketers from brands like Target, Starbucks, SAP, GM, and countless others plan and create their content in Opal?
We’d love to show you. Request a platform walkthrough right here.