Watching the Content Marketing Trend Fade to Black
Why content marketing is losing its luster.
content marketing
A Nine Year Rant
Thoughts and reflections on nine years of blogging.
New Trend, Same Revolution
It’s funny how we as community feel compelled to recreate the same trend over and over again as a new revolution. Consider how the same audience centric principles become repackaged over and over again during the past eight years. We… Read More »New Trend, Same Revolution
Google Author Rank and the Have Nots
Image by Mukumbura
The rush to become officially integrated into the Google Author Rank system or has begun. It’s unfortunate, because Google Authorship forces weighted search rankings that favor popularity and SEO skills over substance.
If content creators want to optimize our chances of being read, what choice do we have but to implement the system? Our search results depend on it.
There have been many blogs about how to implement Google’s Author Rank system, but this isn’t one of them.
Customer Experience Trumps Content Marketing
More and more voices state that content marketing overhype has jumped the shark. They’re right. As a primary strategy content marketing is overhyped. Instead, brands should focus on customer experience marketing.
Before we go too far, let me say I love content, all forms of it, too, not just online, but events, print, and music, just to name a few. Brand developed content (cough, advertising) offers a great tactical toolset, one of my favorites.
That doesn’t necessarily mean content marketing should serve as every company’s primary outreach strategy.
Why not just make Facebook your primary strategy? Should we have that conversation again?
A better strategic approach focuses on marketing tools as extensions of the brand experience.
A Content Marketing Debate
The coupling of the words “content” and “marketing” creates a debate centering on the differences between publishing and selling.
By its very nature, marketing is a function of sales.
As such marketing communications activities, regardless of form — search, email, publicity (on behalf of a company), content creation, social, events, etc. — all represent activities to engage people in a sales process OR support brand reputation, which in turn, increases the likelihood of further sales, recruitment or investment later in time.
I can see why content purists, particularly those with a journalism background, flip their fricking lids at the very phrasing of “content marketing.” After all, they publish quality content.
Read More »A Content Marketing Debate
Posturing Wastes Corporate Content
Image by lululemon athletica Sometimes moving to a conversational medium can be hard. Transitioning style — blogs, videos, social networks updates, etc. — to serve stakeholder groups can be extremely challenging. This is a legitimate challenge of moving from traditional… Read More »Posturing Wastes Corporate Content
Four Storytelling Methods
Image by Gaelic Arts Moving from marketing to an entertaining delivery of useful information creates a much higher likelihood of successful communications between an organization and its stakeholders. Like gamification, storytelling entertains the online reader/viewer/listener, earning their interest. Compelling stories… Read More »Four Storytelling Methods