Content Isn’t King Unless They Say It Is.

Last week I attended a content marketing meet-up here in Austin (AustinContent) and got to hear Simon Salt speak on the subject. It was a great discussion covering many topics from book publishing to Blog World (BTW, Simon has a book coming out on location based marketing that that sounds fascinating).

One of the themes discussed was the importance of planning a content strategy. There was an overwhelming agreement within the group that taking the time to develop an overall strategy was essential to delivering results (and for that matter, determining what the results should be). Social media may get all the hype but talking for talk sake doesn’t pay the bills.

Producing good content takes effort and decisions around the “Why, Who, What, Where, and When“. April Dunford captured this challenge yesterday on her blog using a case study as an example. April writes,

You need to decide which parts of your value proposition the story will highlight, how to structure the story to best bring those points out, what quotes you will want to re-use from the story, what proof-points you would like to have to back up the value, etc. If you don’t clearly lay that out before the story gets written up, it’s going to be a crappy story.

Creating content around your brand and product offering is only a good idea if the end user finds it valuable. White papers, webinars, blog posts, videos, email campains, etc. all must be aimed in the same direction otherwise, you may just end up adding to the noise.

Targeting the right content, at the right customer, through the right channel, at the right time does not happen by accident.