What is Content?

You might have heard the ‘Content is King’ phrase very often, in fact, if you scroll your social media you are probably bombarded by social media marketers and ads using the catch phrase to grab your attention. But do you know what it actually means?

‘Content is King’ was firstly invented by Bill Gates himself in an essay he wrote back in 1996; back then, Gates saw the potential of content and what it will mean for future media, specifically when talking about websites and user experience.
You might dislike the phrase as much as I do, but in all honestly, Content is still the secret sauce to anything brand and digital related. And here is why.

Content is a personal way to create and add value to a brand, by focusing on customers’ behaviours and shifting the brand’s approach from internal to external. The beauty of it, and its own success, is that — when it’s done right — it will always allow you to build on a story and engage with an ideal audience who will benefit directly from it, absorbing its values and experiences.

When working on a brand, it is necessary to think about the problem the brand is trying to solve. And this is not just from a branding perspective, but from a communication point of view too. Communication is the key to talking to an audience. Which brings me onto defining the differences between communication and marketing.

A big big problem in our industry right now is that, because of the bigger traditional media players, we tend to focus on marketing over communication. Marketing (and consumption) is directly influenced by sales and performance, where communication is the basis of why we do what we do.

When I talk to perspective clients or current collaborators, I always love hearing about their own experiences and when I ask the ‘What are the brands you really like and why’ question, most of the time I get the ‘Nike or Apple’ answer, because they are so absorbed by the influence these brands have on their own cultures. They often don’t realise that to get to where Nike or Apple are right now, it’s the result of years of brand and relationship-building, the projection of the brand and its values, how it communicates and how it makes people feel. And marketing often uses this to bring in the sales.
So really, I should start asking ‘How does Apple make you feel, and why? And why do you think so’ because I know that is going to question our behaviours as human and as consumers, and that is what is going to limit our choices and challenge our own X.

So communication is the secret and content is the medium. But Context is the Queen. Oh — did you think it was over with the funny quotes?

Because if you plan what to say and when to say it well, chances are your audience will hear it wide and clear, and will start resonate with your brand, message and values. And it can be a very overwhelming process, because it pushes us to focus on quality and human connections, over sales and money. You could be smashing your targets in record time, but how much harder is it going to be to build a genuine connected audience if you only focus on making the cut?

I can help you bring clarity into what you are doing and help you create a content plan that will reinforce your relationship with your ideal customers, because without content and context, a brand cannot connect to its people.

If you are interested in a content review please email me with your struggles and ideas!