Content Marketing. Should the practitioner’s focus be on Content or Marketing? Or is the answer: focus on Publishing?
Last week I took time out from a major content project and attended a Reuters event on “Branding & Journalism: A Content Marketing Mashup” (yes, not that much of a break from the project!). There were interesting discussions around brand journalism, editorial standards, and the business model for media companies producing client content.
One theme in particular resonated with me. Jessica April with Reuters Content Solutions recommended that brands embrace the “publisher model.” I was already thinking about life after my project and this put my ideas through a new prism.
Marketers start with a goal, then plan out their campaign to achieve that objective within a certain time period. Content is an increasingly critical part of successful campaigns, with different formats – videos, white papers, tweets, webinars, etc. – driving customer and prospect actions across today’s multi-channel environment.
Content is created for these campaigns, used for their duration – and then what? What is the optimal strategy for content in today’s “always on” and “content lives forever” world, where one can’t “set it and forget it”?
Publishers are dependent upon content, too, but a publisher thinks of producing a consistent stream of content for an audience – or rather, creating an environment of information that attracts audiences and sparks them to interact in ways that support the publisher’s business model.
Regardless of whether the content consists of pop culture listicles and baby goats in sweaters or breaking business news and real-time financial charts, the publisher needs to plan for and deliver that stream – maybe even a river – of content to continuously engage and serve its target audiences.
The project I’ve mentioned is carefully designed as a continuous program rather than a more traditional time-based marketing campaign, so when I consider the “publisher model” I’m not thinking about a whole new project, but how to enhance and add to what we’re already building and make it more powerful over time.
Content marketing pros and practitioners are called to become more of a hybrid content marketer-publisher. Looking beyond a specific campaign and its content will help us uncover additional topics, prepare us to engage in emerging conversations, and be ready to attract and go after new audiences.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: The Rise of the Content Marketer-Publisher Hybrid
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