You have to hand it to the so called “experts”. We were promised that social media would be the magic carpet on which our legions of brand advocates would go to spread the word about the marvelousness of our brands, and would free us from the terrible, wasteful expense of advertising. When that went down the drain they trying to tell us that content marketing is the key to consumer engagement. Pure garbage.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Modern marketing is operating under the delusion that consumers want to interact with brands[/inlinetweet], and have relationships with brands, and have brand experiences, and engage with them, and co-create with them.
So the folks who create all the web debris have had to look for some new magic to sell. That miracle is called “content.” Content isn’t a new thing. But it is enjoying a new life. You see, all the specific things that the web promoters promised us would be magic have turned out to be a lot less than promised. So they’ve renamed it all “content” because it is non-specific — no one knows what the hell it is.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]According to the most recent data, Google says that as of July of last year, there were 38 trillion pages on the web[/inlinetweet]. Every page is “content.” And each page may have several individual items of content. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Posting an online recipe may be useful to a food marketer, but calling it “content” is just pretentious drivel.[/inlinetweet] It’s a damn recipe. By invoking the c-word they are doing what marketing people do best — avoiding the specific and hiding behind jargon.
Since when do consumers have the time to go to a site and read content that you posted? [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]Content is essentially like an encyclopedia, it’s there if you need it, but nobody says “I think I’ll read an encyclopedia today”.[/inlinetweet]
Do you really care about the farmer who grows your coffee beans or what type of tomatoes go in your ketchup? Of course not, but the online media experts continue to reel in the suckers who believe every word they say. Too bad…
