In the past two weeks, I’ve been having more and more conversations with clients about actual (not theoretical) content marketing initiatives. These range from producing their own blogs to their own coverage of trade shows or just summaries of conversations with interesting customers. The aim: To educate, engage and motivate prospects to consider and buy their products.
It’s good seeing vendors realize they need to be their own publishers. But many vendors don’t understand is that creating quality content (meaning useful information outweighs sales blather) requires taking on a lot of the work, and the costs, of the trade pubs they used to subsidize through their ad dollars. Unlike a trade pub, online content marketing doesn’t require a printing press, postage and expensive full-time people soaking up office space. But it does require:
Ideas – new, interesting, relevant ideas, observations or comments.
The judgment to see an idea, or a pattern of events, and to know it is newsworthy.
The ability to explain these ideas clearly and concisely (which ranges from writing to editing, formatting and design) and finally
The experience to avoid common mistakes like assuming the reader understands common jargon, or "burying the lead" in paragraphs of introductory throat-clearing.
I’m not saying a vendor has to hire full-timers, or even an outsider like me, to fill all these needs. With the right mix of talent in-house, they can produce quality content on their own – some companies already are. But vendors need to realize there are real costs to producing content that actually educates, engages and motivates customers. They can pay those costs in internal staff time or outside consulting fees (usually a combination of both) but with content, as with everything, you get what you pay for.
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