Discontent marketing: Publish and be damned (from @Bezmeleon) #contentmarketing

I’ve just come across this great post from Chameleon’s Tom Berry (@Bezmeleon): Publish and be Damned.

Next time you create a piece of content, I implore you, just do a quick check. Ask yourself: “am I creating this content simply to tick a box, or am I really saying something that my reader will care about?”

Sound advice.

People continue to refer to a 2011 data-point, from an AOL / Nielsen study, that 27 million pieces of content are shared each day.  That’s fantastic.  It means that your piece of content represents 0.000004% of one day’s traffic.

The future – certainly for B2B Content Marketing – can’t lie in volume.  The basis of content marketing is building a long-term and trusted relationship through the sharing of objectively useful material.  You don’t get there by ticking a box, by meeting a metric for pieces produced.  If all you do is add to the cognitive overload, you can only generate frustration.

It’s hard, but the only way that content marketing – “brand journalism”, as Tom has it – works, is if you add value to your readers’ lives; if you write “something that my reader will care about”.

I’m reminded of the Seth Godin interview I shared previously.