Content Is King

Junta42 just released the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Survey, a study on the use of “content marketing” in business. Content marketing is basically an umbrella term for any kind of marketing that delivers relevant, valuable information to potential customers, as opposed to, for example, the kind of ads you might expect from Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, which are mostly going for brand reinforcement. Not surprisingly, small companies spend twice as much (as a percentage of their marketing budget) on content marketing as large companies.

Fifty-nine percent of companies are planning to increase the proportion of their marketing budget dedicated to content marketing, and are expected to spend 33% of their total marketing budget on content marketing.

Some interesting stats:

• 72% use social media
• 48% of companies use white papers.
• 19% use eBooks

The takeaway: white papers, e-books, and other relevant, high quality content is considered to be a widely respected way to expand your company’s customer base and to improve the salability of your product.

A Word Your Website Should Avoid at All Costs

Sometimes I write and edit web content. I don’t actively market myself for that, and I don’t particularly enjoy it, but I’m good at it and it seems to find me fairly regularly. And of course, when you do something professionally you have a tendency to critique (perhaps subvocally) that skill anytime you see it performed by someone else.

So when I look at people’s websites, I immediately see all the things they’re doing wrong. I have a few pet peeves. One is when people hyperlink the word “click here,” which of course completely kills any search engine optimization that your site otherwise might have had. Do you know what shows up first if you google “click here”? Adobe Acrobat. You’re not gonna win an SEO battle with them, so try targeting your market instead.

But something else I notice, that’s just as big a pet peeve, is mediocre and/or undescriptive copy. Which includes my least favorite word of all time: full-service.

Okay, maybe it’s a compound word. Let’s not nitpick here. My problem with that particular phrase is that it doesn’t really mean anything. Consider:

• “We’re a full-service consulting firm.”
• “We’re a full-service financial broker.”
• “We’re a full-service family law firm.”

I know what a full-service gas station or a full-service restaurant is, but I have no clue what distinguishes a full-service consulting firm from any other kind. I now know exactly nothing more than I would have known had the copy just said that they were a consulting firm, financial broker, or family law firm.

In reality, I think this is code for, “We do a lot of different stuff in this realm, and are really willing to consider whatever you throw our way, so please consider us!” As a result, it occurs as amateurish and fails to distinguish y0u from the competition one bit.

I made this mistake when I first entered the freelance writing market. At the time I was willing to write whatever anyone would throw my way. Now, five years later, I’m a little more discerning and have found a niche for myself in tech writing, ghost writing, and book editing, with some proofreading thrown in for good measure. Today, if someone says to me, “I need a press release” or “I need a brochure,” I don’t even hesitate, I send them right to William Reynolds, who enjoys that stuff. If someone asks me, if I write blogs, I tell them, “I barely write my own, here let me refer you to William, who does.”

So perhaps, for a firm that truly does do everything, it’s harder to come up with a succinct way to describe yourself. But still, you have to be more creative.

That, incidentally, is why you hire a professional writer for your Web copy, instead of trying to do it yourself.