Content is King is what you frequently hear in marketing and social media circles. I don't think that's true. I think Content is the Kingdom or maybe Content is the Castle. It is everything that surrounds and touches your business, not just one person or one ruler or one way. You must have everyone in the empire focused on producing good content (or sharing it in relevant or meaningful ways) and on telling the company's story.
How To Tell A Great Story
Stories are not necessarily fiction. But if you are a consumer reading this, you might think that’s all the marketing types are able to produce. Corporations want to spread their message, their talking points, their sales pitch. But the really good ones, they share a story. They know that stories draw people in and allow them to feel something. That feeling creates a connection. And when we connect, we tend to share that story, thus the growth of
Lance Greathouse pulled me into his life’s work when he told me a story about his brother’s debilitating disease. He told me that when his brother became a wheelchair user, Lance noticed that people treated him differently than before he was sick. As a long time maker, Lance decided to change that by building his brother a super cool, but functional wheelchair.
I could end the post here. I mean, after all, how much more can there be to creating good content? You listen to your readers or your customers and you write about what they care about. Easy enough, right?
Right. You thought I was going to say “wrong,” didn’t you? That’s the key – listening to your audience, your market, and serving up the content that solves their pain, in whatever form they prefer: Audio, video, written word, or smoke signals.
Google
Author Rank
This post started with a different title: Google Authorship Is The Biggest Thing Since The Link. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger told me that in a recent phone conversation we had. We were on the phone because his PR person had sent me an evaluation license of their new(ish) content marketing software: Scribe.
I have not done the full review on it yet, but at first blush, Scribe rocks. It is a simple service really and one that many busy business owners will appreciate. It helps you create smart content. It guides you to what content will work for you, from the topic itself to the actual copy to the keywords and tags. This certainly isn’t a review, but if you’ve been struggling to create content, you’ll want to visit the site and Mr. Clark's blog which is a longstanding content anchor in a sea of choppy advice. He and his team provide some of the best content on how to create really good content.
The reason content marketing is popular right now is because it sounds like the holy grail of marketing. It looks and feels like something new. Like the magic pill that will solve all your challenges. But it isn’t. What’s new is there are boat loads full of content creators now on the market. You can find a writer just about anywhere. But what’s different now is how Google views and ranks those writers. As Brian told me, “Embrace the content creator, the writer as rock star, the subject matter expert is important.”
Jumping back to that alternate title: Google Authorship. The reason the writer becomes important is because Google wants to verify and validate the content, and that you wrote it, to avoid spammy sites. And that verification involves knowing who you are. The reward for being known is you rank higher in the search results. I’m oversimplifying it, just a bit, but you get the idea.
Telling The Story
Back in 2006, Seth Godin wrote a post: How To Tell A Great Story. In it, he summarized a number of great points: “Most of all, great stories agree with our world view. The best stories don’t teach people anything new. Instead, the best stories agree with what the audience already believes and makes the members of the audience feel smart and secure when reminded how right they were in the first place.”
How are you planning to do the "content marketing" thing? Are you blogging regularly?
More Info:
If you need more content marketing posts from Forbes contributors and staff, here they are.
If you want to learn more about Brian Clark and the team at CopyBlogger, you can visit the CopyBlogger blog (which has a post on Google Author Rank that went live today) or go directly to the Scribe Content Marketing Software page.
