Content is King

I’ve been following threads of content marketing and location based services lately, especially QR Codes and location based services.  It’s all neat, and I think moving towards larger trends in marketing.

Among the banter about QR Codes, there’s a loud voice in the background shouting.  “QR Codes don’t work!” they say. “There’s not enough engagement from business’ using them to capture the attention of the viewer.  Ditto with location based services.”

The lesson here is that companies, large and small, are failing at engagement.  So it shouldn’t be said that the new technology doesn’t work, it should be said that it isn’t being worked properly.

But this isn’t a post about how to engage an audience with QR Codes, because I don’t have the answers yet.  Like anything new, the early days of innovation are often wrought with the excessive failures of a few pioneers, present company included.

We’re talking about content.  Content is king, and the more content you create, the better off you’ll be.  Right?

In my time as an SEO professional, I’ve watched a lot of business’ sell content development as a major part of their SEO strategy.  I’ve advocated it myself.  But there have been some recent shakedowns in the SEO industry that lead me to believe a major shift is needed in the way SEO companies sell their services and that those who don’t adjust will have a tough time creating new sales for their clients.

This is what I’ve seen recently that leads me to think the times they are a changin’

• Google’s panda/farmer update slaps down providers of syndicated content
  Number Crunchers: Who Lost In Google’s “Farmer” Algorithm Change? (via Search Engine Land)

• Location based services, QR codes and other layered web services may be failing.
  Read this post, this post and this post for some historical context, and follow it up with this post – all posts on Read Write Web found via this tweet from Don Power.

While it’s only two articles, there’s other supporting content I’ve read that makes me think that there’s been a fundamental shift in how we should develop and market content.

So is content king?

The answer, in my opinion, is no, but content marketing is. You should develop content, yes, but as with anything done “for search engines” (make no mistake, most SEO still is), they’ll eventually catch on to any tactics and devalue them, resulting in what amounts to starting over.  So at the core of content marketing, you should be thinking about who is reading it and what they expect.  If the trail doesn’t lead to a follower or a conversion, then think about why you’re creating the content in the first place and restrategize.