Three misconceptions about content marketing
In this new and sudden age of remote working, which means collaborating with colleagues, stakeholders and customers completely digitally, I, for one, have found some much-needed time to pause and reflect on the work that I have been doing these past seven years in content marketing.
Note the capitalisation of these two words because for those of us working hard in this sub-sector of digital marketing – and developing it as we're working in it – this means a lot.
Some still haven't even heard of the nomenclature as yet!
I'm aghast with shock when people ask me, "Content marketing, um, what's that?"
But when I explain to them what it is, they typically confirm with "oh, you mean, creating marketing material online?", I’ll sigh a bit and say "yes, that's it", and then go on to explain in a little more detail, as they're now curious.
If you consider how fast we’re adopting and adapting to digital/new media technologies, the importance and power of content is bound to grow exponentially. So, wecneed to not only acknowledge this, but also understand that good content can do wonders for your business.
To be fair, successful businesses already know this – and content marketing is one of the reasons behind why they’re successful (I’ve had the privilege of working for some of these organisations).
However, I’ve also encountered some who just. don’t. get. it!
In this blog post, I am going to talk about three (fairly common) misconceptions about content marketing, which I’ve personally witnessed – and clarify these to the best of my ability.
1. Content marketing isn’t an afterthought - nor is it ‘King’ - it’s central
I’m not saying that ‘content is King’ – because it isn’t!
The product/service/cause/messaging of a business or organisation always comes first and everything else orbits around it.
Having said that, content also needs to be a high priority in order to support a business or organisation’s offerings and brand purpose.
For example,
Without relevant, high-quality content on your website, you simply won’t stand a good chance of ranking well in search results, and so it won’t be discovered as easily.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) won’t make much of a positive impact without the right content behind it.
Great user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) doesn’t happen without suitable content for website visitors to engage with, and to complete actions through.
Your branded social media channels won’t gain as much traction without the right content to drive those click-throughs and engagement.
So, for your digital marketing campaigns to succeed, your organisation must place content at the centre of your marketing strategy. Your content must perform in tandem with SEO, PPC (i.e. pay per click), UX, CX and your social media marketing goals.
2. Content marketing isn’t the same as copywriting
There’s an awful lot of confusion around this, and you only have to read a couple of job adverts to see it. It’s annoying to us content marketers because, not only do we find this off-putting, but we also want to pull our hair out because we feel it’s high time those writing the job descriptions for these roles (i.e. someone in Marketing) should know what the role actually is!
The overall purpose of content in a marketing setting is to inform, educate and make people aware about ‘something in particular’. This could be products, services, facilities, functionalities or tools for consumers to make use of; ideally, to improve the quality of their lives.
Content marketers also look at how the content performs in campaigns by analysing web traffic, engagement, downloads and conversions to help them tweak and optimise future campaign performances.
Content is distributed and made available for people to consume – be this directly (B2C) or as end-users (B2B) and, eventually, convert into customers.
Content comes in various types, including:
Blog posts
Landing pages
Infographics
Videos
Podcasts
Copywriters provide the copy, i.e. the words, which go with the other elements of a piece of content, such as images, hyperlinks, banner adverts, social media posts. They usually get the briefs from content marketers or marketing managers.
Here’s a blog post on what genuinely good content is, in case you were wondering.
Content marketers can write the copy AND create/design the content! Their roles aren’t just limited to writing! Their job is to:
provide the creative vision of commercial goals set by stakeholders.
work closely work with SEO, UX, CX, graphic designers, videographers, social media managers, line managers and senior stakeholders within an organisation.
A good content marketer will have a strong understanding in all these disciplines – they may not know how to use graphics design or video editing software, but they would certainly:
Have the vision of what content needs to be made.
Agree to feasible timelines to get the content made.
3. Content marketing is not admin
I’ve saved the worst one for the last because this actually hurts.
I can understand how some organisations classify marketing as an operational expenditure (OpEx) and that’s fine, because marketing is operational in nature.
I can understand that there are administrative activities within marketing operations too.
It’s just that content isn’t one of them!
Creating and designing content is not administrative in nature, at all. It’s creative.
Yes, a good content marketer should:
Be organised
Follow structure and processes
Arrange and participate in (ideally enjoyable) meetings.
…but these are required in most office-based jobs too. This doesn’t mean content marketers are administrators.
It’s unthinkable how some could even think of it this way, but it does happen.
This thinking is outdated, redundant, and it’s also very undermining - it needs to stop. It damages the morale of content marketing professionals and makes them want to find a role elsewhere to feel valued for the work that they do. And if you’re an organisation that cares about its employees, you wouldn’t want this to happen.
I hope this post makes things clearer about what content marketing is and isn’t and wish you every success for your future campaigns.
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