Content is King...Or, so We've Been Told

Admit it, we all like a good marketing mantra.

They’re easy to remember, they roll off the tongue, and if you say it enough times, people will start to believe it.

That’s why the mantra, Content is king caught fire and has stuck around for so long.

For years and years, we’ve been coached and coerced by BS marketers into believing that we have to become content machines who pump out mass volumes of copy day-in and day-out.

In their minds, they believe that the more content they produce, the better off they’ll be.

Sure, this sounds good in theory. However, in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Content is King…But, is it Really?

At this point, you’re probably thinking, why would a marketing firm argue against creating more content?

And my answer to that question is because producing content for the sake of producing content is not only a waste of time, but a waste of money!

It’s monotonous, it provides no real value, and if it’s not quality content, it’ll be ignored.

For content to truly be king or even consumed for that matter, it has to be about THEM – your key target audience.

In order to get to that point, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves and do the less glamorous work of truly defining who it is you want to reach and influence.

The first step in doing so is by understanding your customer opportunity.

From there, you’ll have to drill those target markets down into manageable segments so that you can figure out what type of content each segment wants.

Now comes the fun part, the creation of effective messaging based on the information you’ve gathered about your core target markets.

And, since we’re on the topic of marketing mantras, let’s include the rest of this famous saying…

Content is king, but distribution is queen.

Creating valuable content and not sharing it with the right audience is like writing a blog post and never hitting publish.

Content royalty is equal parts creation and distribution.

This means that you’ll need to consistently deliver valuable content to your target markets when they want it and how they want it.

Doing so will help content retake its throne as king and you’ll better the odds of your content being consumed, quoted, forwarded, retweeted…you get the picture.