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If content is king, and it is, then what, really, is content these days?
On the web, it’s simply not enough to write hard hitting sales copy and call it content. Content, content that educates and builds trust, has become much more active than that and requires a strategic view to be truly effective.
- To compete in the content is king world small business marketers must consider creating, aggregating and filtering the following forms of content:
- Written content (blogs, articles, static web pages, RSS feeds and news updates)
- Spoken content (podcasts, testimonials, case studies, core messages, press releases)
- Video content (tutorials, case studies, testimonials, customer generated, company story, demos and stunning images)
The bar has been raised and your prospects expect to find information in the format they want. They expect to be able to consume this content in many ways, including on a mobile device like an iPhone. You can’t afford to sit this out.
And, guess what, Google, Yahoo and MSN think so much of the mixed media content strategy they have all begun some form of what is being called Universal Search. Now when a surfer goes to a search engine looking for content they may find local directory results, images and video mixed into the organic results. If you aren’t producing these types of content you may find it tougher to compete.
For a great primer on Universal Search look no further than this post from Lee Odden at TopRank.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at Oct 18, 07 | 3:20 am and is filed under Branding, Conversational Marketing, Core message, Universal Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
“prospects expect to find information in the format they want.”
Amen! I’ve been saying this for a long time, but there are multiple dimensions to it. You’ve nailed one with written/spoken/video. Others include push vs pull and structured vs unstructured.
See my blog for more:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/more-evidence-of-web-20-personality-types/
This is also a chicken and egg problem for new businesses. To draw in either users or advertisers, what you really want to do is show that you can offer unique content. If your content is user-generated, though, you have to start with the promise that one day there will be content.
Thanks for this excellent post John and for pointing us towards Lee Oddin’s piece. For those of us with limited time and resources running small businesses, the idea of now having to incorporate video etc on our sites is daunting. But having said that, the software I use to develop my site has all these options built in so that does make it a lot easier. There’s also some very good free training I’m doing at the moment which gives step by step info on how to produce audio, vids etc.
Tamsin
I completely agree with your views on “active content”. I recently came across a new video directory that is free. It is http://www.MeetMyBiz.tv. The site has just recently launched. I am among the first to join this directory. It seems to be fairly comprehensive for the everyday business owner. I am hoping it will be a good networking opportunity that will mesh connecting with other buisness people and growing my business.
Rather than a verb, content is the substantive piece of tomorrow’s marketing. 30 second advertisment is a dying breed, conversational marketing is the trend of the future and our content strategy will be the centerpiece. Congratulations to John for his great blog and book
Guillermo Zambrano
I think that content is shifting from just words to images, video, and movable content like “widgets”.
I think good content has to educate WHILE not overwhelming the reader.
John,
This was a very timely post for me…it really resonates as true. Our company recently has been experimenting with distributing content through multiple mediums — above and beyond blogging & the written word.
Allowing our audience to consume data when they want, where they want, how they want is something we’re finding works in improving the quantity AND quality of our prospects.