It’s kind of scary to think about it, but I’ve been doing this “internet + marketing” thing for the last ten years directly in tech, plus several more in non-digital sectors prior to that trying to convince luddites to adopt this Crazy Internet Thing.
It wasn’t always called “content marketing” proper, but success online has always been driven to some degree by the substance of the stuff you put on the internet (i.e. “content”), whether it be on your website or someone else’s.
But it sure is different now.
Back in my day (when we walked uphill both ways…oh sorry…)…
Ahem.
Back in the earlier days of marketing on the web, creating really useful materials and posting them online was a bit of anathema. My former COO hollered, and I quote with a New Zealand accent:
“Why in all F@#K would we take our best stuff and share it for everyone to read?!”
That was about the size of it.
You can imagine how much has changed since then. And in the spirit of describing same, I have put this in a handy list for you to pontificate over and use as ammunition in the comments to assail me with all the things I’ve missed.
1. Sharing your “secret sauce” is actually the secret.
Realistically, what you do isn’t all that valuable. Because a million other people are probably doing that. So by all means, share oodles and oodles of the “what”. Even the “why” is really good content fodder.
The “how” is the stuff you save for the paying clients. Remember when everyone had a heart attack about sharing any of it?
You can’t win by saying “call us” and demanding that would-be customers succumb to a sales call just to get the deets on what you do, why it’s different, and why you do it (and moreover, how much it might cost). You have to put most of that out there and be willing to bring the goods on the details of why your execution is better than the other guy’s.
Then people pay you to get access to the “how”. Whether that’s your product or your expertise, it’s the same. But you need to give away most of what leads up to that line, and let your value be captured in how you execute on what you’ve educated your prospects about.
2. You are not alone.
And not in a good way.
Everyone and their brother is “content marketing” now. Which means, for most of them, that they’re churning out blog posts and ebooks with no discernible direction and CATS! and EXPLODING THINGS! and CELEBRITY QUOTE! and grappling with desperation for eyeballs, any eyeballs, for a moment to share with their boss in a snapshot report from their favorite cheap social media tool. (I have a better one, if you’re so inclined, because I work there.)
In My Day, my then-company was unique in that we created stuff that people could use, and we put it in lots of places. There just wasn’t a lot of other companies doing that at the time.
Unfortunately, now the Stuff People Can Use is utterly drowned by the Stuff You Can’t Do F#@K all With But It’s In Your Feed Just The Same.
You can imagine what that does to the odds of your stuff being seen, much less actually put to use.
3. “Influencers” have ruined a lot of this.
Yep. You read me right.
There are the people that are actually influential (read: compelling people to a specific action based on their level of trustworthiness on said subject), and then there are the people that make lots of noise (much like a toddler clanging pots and pans on the kitchen floor) because someone gave them a bag of money.
Anyone can pay to have their stuff shilled by someone with a lot of eyeballs and gain momentary attention.
Very few people can find the match that equals interesting content + relevant material + compelling ask and get people to do the thing they want them to do (which is usually some combination of clicking and downloading and signing a contract).
Remember, you don’t get a prize for getting someone to look. The prize happens when you get someone to look, stick around, and ask for more.
4. Really good content is actually the domain of experienced marketers to do well.
I know, bring on the hate for the “I found the internet last year and now I’m a Content Marketer(TM)” brigade. But listen.
Contrary to what you might think, content marketing is just Marketing(TM) applied to meet the media of the day.
I’ll concede that we’ve made a bit (a BIT) of a culture shift toward wanting to create helpful content vs. blatant sales pitch, but not by much.
What has changed is marketers’ access to the questions their customers are actually asking, which makes even mildly adequate marketers better at their craft because the data gets shoved in their faces more than it ever has (not to say we don’t have a long way to go…we do).
But realistically, you can’t just decide to do content and flip the switch to piles of money. You have to know how to market.
Good marketers know that “content” is just a disseminated version of the smart marketing they would have created anyway but that was harder to find. The internet helps us there (THANKS, AL GORE). “Content”, such as it is, is today’s mechanism to find the right buyers. But if you’re not good at marketing, you won’t be good at content marketing, either.
The strategy doesn’t change much. The tactics do. And so it goes with our industry of choice. You can’t make a true silk purse out of a sow’s ear, or a great marketer out of a dude/chick with access to a blog and some stock photos.
5. You can’t shortcut it.
Once upon a mattress, you could kind of shortcut content marketing. Kind of.
By that I mean that something (a video, ebook, blog post) relatively smart, concise, useful and relevant could get lots of airplay and attention simply because it was unique in the market (ask me how I know!).
But five years after that, or six, you can’t simply replicate that approach and believe that anyone is going to immediately find you and love you and laud your very archives.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Being influential online is a slow burn, whether you’re a company or an individual. It takes quality content, and lots of quality interactions, over time to have any meaning whatsoever.
If it took 7 impressions for someone to respond to an ad in the old days, it takes dozens of impressions for someone to say “huh, I keep seeing these guys all over the place” and finally click something to read a piece of your content from start to finish, and even then only if you’re meeting them somewhere in the middle of their subconscious brain with that bit of content in a moment when they’re open to what you have to sell.
You have to play the long game, or you are playing to lose.
—
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Good marketing is good marketing that also adapts to the media and markets around it. Content Marketing doesn’t get a pass on being strategic, relevant and tied into something larger than itself. It’s the new media, and to some extent, the new markets.
But you can’t fake good for long.
You can get lucky with a video or a blog post and get a lot of people to click. But you can’t keep them around unless you do something meaningful with that action. And really, that’s the only thing that’s ever separated the good marketers from the wannabes. That little lever flip from “that’s interesting” to “I can’t live without this.”
Ten years feels like a long time, doesn’t it? But it’s really not that long. Not on the internet.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Are you making the content that can endure for the next ten years?
yep.
(Don’t you love those ultra-useful comments?)