There’s a popular phrase that’s been doing the rounds in internet and marketing circles that ‘Content is King’. Content is not King. The phrase has been troubling me for some time because it’s far too simplistic in its ideology.
Suggesting that ‘content is king’ is suggesting that a website with good content will solve all your problems. What it overlooks is the need for good distribution – essentially communication – of the content you produce. There’s no point in having good content if no-one’s consuming it. It simplifies the fact that anyone producing good content actually has to work hard to make people find it and that the content alone is not going to bring people to your website. Other than with a bit of good SEO. You need to create a community on your website, using the good content you produce, so that people are commenting, sharing your content or even creating their own. Many people have become preoccupied with creating good content without asking themselves who’s reading it and what they’re going to do if no-one is.
I was having a conversation around this with @pbizzle on Twitter and he came up with a new way of looking at it :
This is an excellent concept. Think of your content as the first stepping stone. It’s what you then do with the content that determines whether people will feel compelled to engage with it. Use your content as a commodity to start a conversation and consider the context in which you’re doing so. Content is not king because we are now saturated with good content producers so this isn’t enough anymore. You have to work harder for your visitors now and you don’t have long to retain their attention and ultimately, their loyalty, if they’ve stumbled across your site.
Andrew Odlyzko wrote a paper in 2001 titled ‘Content is not King’ in which he explores the history of communication and how it fits with the internet as a ‘content delivery system’. He argues that what our society historically been about is communication, connectivity. This is absolutely true and demonstrates that this is what companies should be considering and realising that good content alone does not facilitate a connected community around your brand.
It’s also worth considering the revenue model around good content. Many websites and companies are still producing good content but it’s password protected or blocked by a need to pay to consume it. We all know that the freemium model is now the practised standard if you’re leading someone through to content that requires a subscription. But this alone isn’t enough. If I’m going to part with my money for premium content I need to not only trust the person or company behind it, I need to have a relationship with them. I need to have built that up with them through other social tools so that not only can I trust that I’m about to pay for quality content, but that I’m actually willing to pay for it rather than get it for free because I want to support them.
Another reason why content is not king? We are no longer passive consumers. Good content alone is not going to engage me. It needs to facilitate different conversation points external to the site itself and I need to be able to contribute to the original material.
It’s time to stop thinking that content is king and realise that creating a good, active website cannot be defined by one facet alone. Content is one of aspect of this and certainly an important one, but it’s one among many.
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Hey guys, I know where you’re coming from on this but I’m not sure I’d agree at all. From my own experience of content production for various different online channels, I thoroughly believe that if you create great content (and I will clarify what I mean by that in a second) then it is worth more then all other things you can do to a site.
Great content means that something is well written, of interest to a large number of people, may be breaking or at least leading edge news, is fully optimised (both SEO and SMO) and utilises several media types within it. By doing this you will achieve two things very easily, and that is firstly the pull of your content off your site by either good search listing or good directory listing, and secondly your regular readership, which I will presume you have if you are capable of writing great content, and their push of your content for you. You should be able to achieve fantastic distribution without having to do any major distribution work yourself so long as you have great content. People will read a blog/site that looks horrible, is difficult to navigate and is generally poor, if there is great content. No matter how nice a site looks, functions and performs, if the writting is poor then no one will read it.
I will have to stand on the other side of the fence on this one and say that I think content is still king and always will be. It may have more helpers then in the past, to allow it to reach the masses, but without it, their isn’t anything to work with.
HI,
I can see where you’re coming from and I agree that good content is only one of many factors. However, I think the idea that “content is king” is really only a statement of prioritisation i.e. you can have the best connected distribution system in the world but it’s pointless if you have nothing to say. I advise a lot of small businesses in online marketing and in my experience helping them connect to their target segments is hampered by two major issues – their lack of knowledge of what their customers will actually view as valued content and their inability to maintain the momentum of creating it once I have left them to their own devices. Once they have these two issues cracked, communication and distribution become much more straightforward – I’d suggest a new royal family then ( no sexism intended!) – understanding what the customer values is king – creating that value content is queen and figuring out how to distribute it to the customer are all the little princes and princesses.
I’d be really curious as to what are the other facets that are as important as the content/information that someone’s come to your website for?