Bull***t Ebooks 📚📚

The other day I was surfing LinkedIn when I was presented with an ad.

It was for an ebook that was extremely relevant to a topic (hiring) that I was looking into at the moment.

The company sponsoring the ad is a major player in the Enterprise software market. It’s a name that you would know instantly if I said it.

After submitting my email, subscribing, following the link, and download the PDF, I began to skim through it.

It was one of the most disappointing things I’d experienced. And this from a company worth close to $1 trillion dollars.

To give you an example of the kind of “useful” information they presented, let me just copy and paste a few of the headings here.

• HR leaders typically know the type of qualities to look for in a candidate.
• The questions you ask in an interview will help you determine which candidate is the best fit for your organization.
• The candidate’s answers to your interview questions will provide information about the job seeker’s talents, skills, and expertise.
• The final stage of the interview process is to select the candidate who is the best fit for your organization, team, and the position.

Are you kidding me? This is your original content?

These are literally most of the main points from the document.

“The final stage of the interview process is to select the candidate who is the best fit for your organization, team, and the position.”

DUH! That’s why we interview them.

This particular piece of content was just bull***t. No value. Not helpful. Just a waste of time.

I can almost guarantee the process that the company went through to end up here.

• First, someone said, “ebooks convert really well on LinkedIn!”
• Next, the company outsourced ebook creation to an agency.
• The agency hired copywriters to put the document together.
• Copywriters did a quick Google search on “How to Hire Someone”.
• Then they rewrote that content into a 1,000-word guide and sent it to a designer.
• The designer dresses it all up and makes it fancy.
• Then it gets posted and promoted online. The agency checks the “we’re doing content marketing” box and everyone gets to keep their job.

This is exactly what happens when companies make their technical or subject matter experts unavailable for assistance. Or when deadlines start to creep in and a “just get it done” takes precedence over value.

Content marketing has to be valuable.

If you just regurgitate content others have produced, you provide no value. And valuable content gets noticed. It gets read. It gets absorbed. It gets shared.

But it’s hard to create. It takes work. It takes knowledge. It takes expertise.

And it takes actually having something to say.

But when done well, it can change your business.

Are you doing content marketing? If so, are you actually producing content? Or simply wasting time and effort on bull***t ebooks?

It’s time to get past the BS.

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