Just last week, we talked about the social media royal family, with content as the king and community management as his queen. But what if content isn’t king? No one ever notices content. No one walks out of a concert, thinking “wow, what great content!” and no one thinks of Shakespeare as a great “content creator.” In Greg Satell’s recent article, he talked about how most marketers have yet to learn how to create content that is actually engaging for their audience.
Although some brands, such as Nike and Coca Cola, have seen success from their content marketing program, most have not. In fact, less than 40 percent of marketers have actually considered their content marketing programs to be effective.
So, what does he propose is the problem and how do we fix it? According to Satell, the problem is that content is not king, content is crap. The problem is that so much of our content is designed to grab consumers’ attention, not to hold it. This is short-form advertising and will not last. Instead, marketers need to focus on building relationships with customers. Good content is useful, it tells stories. Good content offers a real value consistently. Content cannot be king until marketers are producing good content. Until then, it’s just crap.
