In early 2014 Mark Schaefer posted a piece titled ‘Content shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy’ on his website.
To me, it is one of the few pieces of truly intelligent strategic thinking I have seen on the topic of ‘Content’.
In the post he poses the proposition that because posting content is free, there would come a tipping point where there was so much content in total, and much of it just regurgitated rubbish, simply generated because it is fashionable, that the impact would be lost.
I think we have passed the point, illustrated in this guest post from Buzzsumo on Mark’s site.
The data certainly confirms what I see on my site, and in my digital travels every day, but we should not be surprised. We all know that if something is free, it carries very little value or credibility.
Why then do we continue producing content?
Simple answer: Because when you produce quality, original, thought provoking, instructive and challenging content, it does still deliver a worthwhile strategic outcome. You become seen as an expert, or at least someone worth talking to in your domain.
Producing such content on a continuous basis is very difficult and time consuming. It has a very long lead time before the benefits kick in, so most either give up, or outsource it and generally end up adding to the pile of digital rubbish.
There is a second significant challenge.
Once you produce this great, useful content, you have to get it seen. The biggest challenge in marketing these days is getting attention, and once having got it, not blowing the chance to do something constructive with it, to engage with those to whom you can add value.
This implies a whole lot of other basic marketing challenges, including that you have identified closely your ideal customer, and that you have a closely defined value proposition for them.
Then you have to ‘find‘ them, by one of any number of means, that can involve any or all of a number of strategies leveraging digital media and social platforms, as well as good old fashioned advertising and networking. Having found them, the next step is to engage them in a process that leads to a mutually beneficial commercial relationship.
Great content can drive all these steps.
Once created, great content is the gift that keeps giving. Even if you do not take the obvious steps of refurbishing great content as videos, longer and shorter versions from a tweet to a book, and reposting on various alternative platforms, a great post will continue to deliver viewers to your site, as does this one for me.
The numbers are not spectacular by any measure, but this is one of many posts that delivers page visits daily, to my StrategyAudit site. Despite being almost 5 years old, this post continues to attract increasing attention, which leads to the opportunity to engage and generate business.
So, the answer to the question in the headline is ‘Yes’, with the caveat that, like almost everything n life, you must be both good at it, and different to the crowd to get noticed.
Photo courtesy Thomas’s pics via Flikr
