Snake Oil In Disguise: Useless Information Passing As Good Advice

You can’t pass a statement like that off as advice for beginners. Beginners are new to a field; they’re not idiots. Every time I read or hear that, without any qualifications or additions, I think of Michael Phelps’ coach sitting him down to discuss his race plans and training strategies in the lead-up to the Olympics and telling him to “go fast.” Is it really likely that someone would reply, “I was under the impression that creating rubbish content was a good idea, but you’ve made me see the error of my ways!”

We gladly accept statements that say nothing in the same way we sit and listen to some politicians say nothing when they speak. At its best, saying a lot without saying anything is a remarkable talent. Blogs attract thousands of readers, public figures gain thousands of fans and people really can make a lot of money and build a lot of credibility by saying nothing. The only way this will stop (and, in general, it probably won’t) is by communities no longer humouring it.

University sociology departments are quite good at spending a lot of money to find out what most of us already knew, but SEO and social media writers aren’t bad at it either. Both parties are also good at identifying and defining elements of their topics that everyone already knows and understands. The reason they’re praised for writing obvious, meaningless articles and blog posts is because most people agree with what they’ve written. It’s easy to praise someone with whom you agree, so stating the obvious and not adding anything of meaning is an easy way to gain praise.

Here is an idea: When you see bogus content like this slithering its way up the rankings of Sphinn, desphinn it. When you stumble upon such a piece, thumb it down. When a speaker at a conference advises you to “get to know your audience,” and adds nothing more, ask the person during Q&A “how?” and don’t be satisfied with boilerplate, lazy answers. Don’t add comments like, “I completely agree!” because that is why the piece or the speech is useless. All you can do is agree with it because it states the SEO equivalent of looking at this picture, taken out of my office window, and saying, “it’s sunny in Seattle today.”

There are three reasons why people spurt forth this sort of useless information:

1. Laziness: It’s easy to put together the Top 10 Ways to Write Good Content, even if they’re actually a lot better informed and a lot smarter. They could analyse a merger or deconstruct a search results page, but it looks a bit too much like hard work.
2. Lack of knowledge: They don’t know very much, so defining the defined and pondering the pondered is the limit of what they can write.
3. Fear of giving away good tactics: This is more understandable, but should probably be remedied by writing less, not writing rubbish. At a conference, this is unacceptable: if people have paid the sort of money it usually costs to go to conferences in our industry, they should be treated to at least some of a speaker’s more valuable knowledge.

There is a big difference between creating content for beginners and underestimating people’s intelligence. Our Beginner’s Guide does not belittle those who read it, and Rand’s soon-to-be-released rewrite is even better. I’m also not proposing that every post or every presentation should be ground-breaking. Far from it. It’s simply not possible, and we’ve all been guilty of phoning one in. However, we must stop paying attention and handing out praise to those people who have seemingly tricked us into believing that their brand of hot air is worth consuming over and over again. It does none of us any good, and it boils down to blatant trickery.