What the Hell is ‘Content Marketing?’

There’s a new buzzword in town. Google the term “content marketing” and you get 565 million results. It’s a buzzword that isn’t going away any time soon.

And beneath its typically obscure label, there’s a whole world of common sense.

We spend most of our time gaming the system — buying email addresses, bribing people into giving us “likes,” juicing our search results with keyword-loaded landing pages. It’s a little like Lance Armstrong did to win his races.

Except in addition to using banned chemicals Lance Armstrong also trained. He was also undeniably a great racer.

Where we are not investing our time is on the things that matter most:

• Creating stuff people want to read.
• Creating stuff that people want to watch.
• Creating stuff that people want to engage with.
• Creating stuff that people want to share with their friends.

That’s all content marketing is.

So train yourself, whenever you see the term “content marketing,” recite after me:

• No one has to watch your video.
• No one cares about your organization’s inner workings.
• If your stuff isn’t useful or fun, people won’t engage.

Congratulations, you are now a content marketer.

If you want to know what you’ve gotten into, see this terrific piece from Forbes.