Content Marketing and its Downside
Content marketing has been a critical tool used by massive and small companies to attract customers through building traffic.
However, does the name really represent the practice?
I don’t think so!
I remain skeptical when one mentions content marketing. Why, you ask? Because content marketing is a misinformed concept!
No doubt, you’ve read a series of content blogs, even with the slightest involvement with content marketing.
A twitch invades you when I read “content” again and again. Semantic dissociation is settling in with every other c-word you hear. And you’re even undecided whether to use this word in another of its more classic context, are you? Well, maybe you’re no more content now.
Here comes the problem.
What happens when the mighty Google redoes its brutal, but admittedly brilliant search algorithm? A significant disruption in the entirety of the marketing realm awaits to happen.
Well, Google is the king when it comes to content marketing as we’ve all come to appreciate. However, only a few people seem to take this problem-that “content” totally sucks-seriously.
It all begins with the wrong wording. Enjoy all the delightful irony there is, but someone made a terrible mistake when they called this marketing strategy flavor “content”
Super vague! Misleading! Inaccurate! Organically flawed!
It falls miles away from the acknowledged truth by Neil Patel and Marketing Institute Listicle about the ingredients of a super-powered content expert:
Having knowledge of the things you’re talking about is paramount.
Content creation is a long game that involves the development of materials with the hope that it will attract Google searcher or trick the intelligent Google algorithm into ranking a platform higher.
The content of the blog or an article is not really a big concern to many content creators, provided they use the specified keywords.
You cannot call yourself a content marketer if you do not really understand what you are talking about!
Most content creators post a 1,800-word blog about a product or a brand and play the long game. They ensure that the content is actionable, authoritative. After that, they sit back and hope that the unbiased google algorithm will take it up the ranks.
What they don’t notice is that it is your quality and the truth in your post that makes you succeed in content marketing.
In some cases, you may mess up in your posts! Your intentions were right; you only wanted to share in your content to help improve traffic to your platform. However, you end up giving information that ruins you.
Professionals have even managed to mold a career out of these mistakes. When you pour your heart and soul into what you thought was content, you put yourself in a vulnerable position with a ruthless online audience.
Site audits, content audits, and SEO pros exist for this sole reason! To help fix the mess that you created. These audits and SEO pros have managed to run the lucrative operation out of your naïve mistakes.
Content Marketing should be replaced with Knowledge Marketing
The baseline in content creation is very simple. The brand with the best content wins in the long run.
The best information, when provided with creative optimization, always come out on top. One thing is, however, not yet clear; succeeding in content marketing is not because of the product or brand you are promoting. It is because of the knowledge you are sharing.
Content marketers don’t see the similarities between journalists and them. However, they are much closer to journalists than storytellers.
Why don’t content creators enjoy the high Google ranking that journalists have?
The answer is simple.
Journalists figured out the importance of knowledge marketing long ago.
Journalists have been creating content since before anyone had coiled up the term content marketing. They have actually managed to succeed in it!
Legitimate journalists have the most authority and get the most traffic on most of the current issues. The high ranking by Google can attest to that.
They enjoy the precious SEO-juiced backlinks with no one even doubting that they are trying to sell content. They are sharing knowledge, hard-known facts, and details. They can back their information with a credible source.
So, what am I trying to say?
It is all about knowledge
They are not playing the long game of keywords and empty content. They are trading real information.
Content marketers have it all wrong!
Instead of attracting traffic through sharing legitimate information that might be beneficial to readers, they are trying to sell through the use of stories, yet they do not know what they are supposed to say.
It is not that content marketing has not been effective. Big companies have been hiring content marketers for as long as we can remember! However, the name does not fit the practice.
If you lack knowledge, your content will be useless. It is just garbage!
There are way too many bad contents out there that are not very effective. Why don’t you approach content marketing like a journalist? With the knowledge that can be verified!
Making up stories to promote a brand might result in you tarnishing your name. If you are to be successful in content marketing, you should consider changing how you frame it.
Remember, it is not content you are selling. It is not the story you are telling. It is also not about your unique brand image or personality.
It all lies in knowledge!
Real, verifiable, and serious knowledge that can help your reader. That is what you should be creating!
The faster you learn the art of knowledge marketing, the quicker you can start coming up with actionable content that attracts good traffic.
It is important to note, however, that you cannot generate knowledge. You can only accrue it. You do not have the prowess to make knowledge. Actually, no one can. Even the very best scientists only discover knowledge.
Therefore, instead of trying to generate knowledge, coming up with stories for your content, consider accruing knowledge.
Approach it more like a journalist and less like a writer. The storyline is not valuable if it cannot be attached to something real.
Don’t share a made-up story. Tell a story whose truth you can back with facts.
Instead of the cliché stories and easy SEO ranking tips, go for the more difficult tasks: Develop a platform to trade your knowledge.
Once you have created a platform, you will have somewhere to pour all the knowledge you have accrued.
With a quality platform, you can share different knowledge subjects for as long as you want. That way, you can outlast the specific content you have created for a particular job.
Content Marketing is not about Content
It is about developing knowledge that can contain and frame the material so that it can be consumed.
Once you have taken up the art of knowledge market, the development of content with facts and placing them in the right context based on what you want to promote will be easier. With facts, you'll climb Google's rankings faster.