If you are in marketing or use social media marketing in your B2B business, you are probably pretty familiar with the new tsunami that has taken over…CONTENT MARKETING. Great concept and great value…but is it now being ruined by marketers?
At the core of “Content Marketing” is the “story”…the way to take your content and turn it into something someone in your audience will actually read. It takes the boring data and information from your industry and brings it to life through a story of some kind. Not only does this make total sense but it is what humans enjoy reading. Stories started for us when we were newborns and have continued all the way through our lives. Granted, higher education believes in more facts and data than stories but even this is changing in some institutions.
Now that traditional marketing is virtually gone…or at least on a steep downward trajectory, marketers have turned…in mass…to social channels to try and get their message across. Many still use “traditional techniques” overlaid onto “social channels” but that is a topic for many more blog posts on why this is completely ineffective. Others have taken to telling stories to improve the “readability” of their content. Great idea…but is it being properly executed? Now we are getting inundated with “stories”…some of which are interesting…many of which are wolves dressed up in sheep clothing…simply a different way of selling.
Trying to “sell” and “market” through a story isn’t what the audience neither wants nor expects. They want to read a story that “HELPS” them in some way in whatever they are doing. When this gets transformed into a “marketing pitch”, no matter how subtle, it diminishes the value of the content. And the customer/audience sees this…they aren’t stupid. They came to read something that is going to help them in whatever they do…not listen to your advertisement. This is still “pimping your product/service” and it is still “PUSH marketing.” We can call it by a different name, like “content marketing”, but it is still the same old recipe of pushing what you do and why your audience should buy it.
True “Story Telling” and true “Content Marketing” is designed to HELP YOUR AUDIENCE…that’s it…nothing more. And if you help your audience, they in turn will help you. They will share it with their 1000 other connections. They will personally tell others how great it is…and on social channels. They will “advocate” for you. They will “SELL FOR YOU”…but you have to give them a chance. This is true “PULL Marketing” and at the core of what “Story Telling” and “Content Marketing” is designed to accomplish.
Leave it to marketers to find a way to take something great and ruin it by turning it into another “push” tool and drive their audience away. When will they get that this isn’t the answer…especially not in the highly connected, customer centric, word-of-mouth world we live in today. It doesn’t work…in fact it causes more damage to your brand than doing nothing. If you are doing this…STOP…you will do your brand and your customers/audience a huge favor!! Time to re-think your “Content Marketing” strategy and do an honest evaluation of whether it is “HELPING” your audience or “SELLING” to your audience…this should be your new guide to building your brand.
