Content marketing is the wrong term, as I have discussed before, you are not marketing content, you are using content to attract people to you website to be persuaded to perform specific actions such as purchasing, lead generation etc.
You are not marketing content, but creating magnetic content. Content that not only attracts, but is sticky, and embeds into the sub-consciousness.
But, the term content marketing has taken hold, and propagated mostly by people wanting to sell to people who lack understanding over the form.
Why is this important?
Putting too much emphasis on the content rather than the purpose of the website can take your eye off the ball. Its not abut the content, the content is merely a tool, a mechanism. Some content creators miss this aspect and end up having the cart pulling the horse.
It’s understandable because whenever the term content marketing is raised the cliched terms of “quality content! and “content is King”, are not far behind. And like all cliches, there is a foundation of truth, but not the whole truth.
I think the reason for the over focus on “content”, rather than the purpose of the website is because most content creators still don’t get the reason web content exists and what it can be used for.
A lot of content is created for the purpose of link building, if the content is created and then marketed its the wrong way round. To create content and then market the content is wasteful and inifficient. The marketing should be first and the content comes after.
You find out what the linkerati want and then you create content.
It’s odd how many come up with the idea for content before fully analysing the needs of the market they are targeting.
Find out what people want and give it to them.
Most people think the content they should be producing should be the content which they like, rather than what the market requires.
Marketing then content
Not
“Content marketing”
But I’m afraid it doesn’t scan well.
Its not simply about being pedantic, its about creating creating the correct mindset and work flow.
Developing The correct mindset is something that is crucial to creating magnetic web content and I am going to be blogging about this later.
You may not think this matters much, but if you don’t have the right content creation processes in place and most don’t then your content efforts will never reach their full potential, whilst your competitor gets it together.