3
OPINION
Baby steps for managing content
T he concept of managing data in the second decade of this century can be daunting. As a society, we are living, breathing, eating, and sweating information. Overload may be too nice of a word to describe the daily data consumption for folks in all walks of life, even more so for marketers in the AEC industry. Instead of trying to fix “the big problem,” we should handpick issues that we could have a decent chance of addressing successfully.
Javier Suarez
Two quotes come to mind, one by Nobel Memorial Prize winner Herbert A. Simon who said, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” and the other from American writer, consultant, and professor Clay Shirky who said, “It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.” Both statements narrow down the main issue to noise reduction so we can successfully assimilate a manageable amount of data. In the data game, we are both culprits and victims. We complain constantly about being overwhelmed by so much information but often ignore the fact that we are addicted to sharing as much content as possible and thus contributing to “the problem.” But can we afford to scale back on both sides – share less content and consume less content – and how much are we affected by the fear of missing out, or FOMO?
PUSH – OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THE NOISE. Looking through an ethical lens, we should address content development and sharing as nothing short of intentional. It must be our responsibility to only push content that has a valid and specific purpose and provides value to the intended audience. In the AEC industry, we are failing in this regard as we treat this process as transactional: “I have one piece of content, therefore I must put this out there as soon as possible.” Why shouldn’t we stop to consider if we are saying something worthy of consumption? Why shouldn’t we stop to figure out if this piece of content can and will be filtered through the noise? Why shouldn’t we scale back and only contribute impactful messages that transcend the passive threshold and are actually “actionable”? Why shouldn’t we stop
See JAVIER SUAREZ , page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 27, 2025, ISSUE 1570
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker