Lessons from Copyblogger CEO and Founder Brian Clark 

No matter how much game you think you have, your relationships start off cold.

Over time, they heat up (or should, if it’s in the cards). Some faster than others—some slower.

The same goes for brands’ relationships with their audiences. And do you know where the relationship is at its coldest? At the social media touchpoint.

I’ll admit it. Before I started my own marketing firm, I worked in other advertising and PR firms and often hated what we produced: pithy, uppity ads that sounded super clever and trendy, like a bunch of skinny, uber-hipster millennials wearing tight jeans and thick-rimmed glasses came up with them while drinking their fifth nonfat soy green-tea lattes and smirking ironically. I think this actually happened. A lot.

To me the ads, brochures, taglines, marketing “collateral” and other “stuff” we produced seemed vapid and clever for the sake of being clever — like we were trying to impress ourselves and other marketing people. Plain language, simplicity and directness were dismissed for their lack of creativity and artistic flair.

When scrolling through Vine the other night, I came across a ton of videos with the text overlay “dubsmash.com.” How? One of my favorite celebrity Viners, Eric Stonestreet of Modern Family, was re-vining tons of these videos showing fans acting out one of his character Cam’s hysterical scenes.

“Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.” —Google

Well our friends at Google are switching things up yet again. Effective in late April, the search engine innovators will give even more love in mobile searches to sites that are responsive or optimized for mobile. It only makes sense, and is sure to improve the experience for users on smartphones, phablets, tablets and other mobile devices.

How many times have you heard that no one reads anything longer than a 140-character tweet anymore? That our attention spans are shot due to digital information overload, multi-tasking and multi-channeling? That if you create anything longer than 200 words or 30 seconds no one will pay any attention to it? Soundbites! “Snackable” content! Tweets!

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. (Well, except for the attention-span thing.)

While technology has certainly changed the way we think and process information, people still desire substantial information. They just consume it differently. In fact, due to the overwhelming glut of content available on the Internet today, Internet users are becoming more discerning about the content they consume, searching and scanning for content that’s worth their attention and time, and engaging more heavily with valuable, lengthy content. And in the online world — where everyone can be a publisher — the way to distinguish yourself is by producing an outstanding piece of substantial content that stands out from the rest.

I churn out content every day—blog posts, magazine articles, press releases, Tweets, LinkedIn updates, the list goes on. This is, of course, not surprising, given that I’m in content marketing.

When sharing knowledge and knowhow in our professional space, we’re constantly dishing about ways you can produce better content: how to create more alluring blog posts, repurpose articles, craft the perfect social media post. But, I’m human, too. And I’m a content consumer. And, honestly, I’m overwhelmed.

Vince Vaughn’s new movie, Unfinished Business, hits theaters today. Co-starring Dave Franco and Tom Wilkerson, the flick features a small-business trip gone wrong. It generated buzz around the Internet earlier this week after Twentieth Century Fox and iStock created a hilarious batch of stock photos starring the Unfinished Business cast. We decided to get in on the fun by using them as a canvas for some content marketing memes. Check them out: