This post originally appeared on the Opinion section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Opinion.
Don’t take this the wrong way. We can still be friends and all, but if you think you are doing content marketing, you may need to think again.
After an 18-month hiatus from marketing events, I recently rejoined the circuit, when an observation startled me like a locker room towel-snap: There’s more talk of content marketing than ever before, but fewer actual results.
I’m beginning to think companies have a “find-and-replace”-deep commitment to the practice: They dust off their old presentations and substitute the words “content marketing” for whatever PR or social buzzword was contained in the original deck. Voila! Insta-content marketer.
The thing is, yes these presenters are delivering content — they publish a stray infographic here, a wayward ebook (with influencer commentary!) there — yet unless those assets are integrated into the broader set of growth-driving activities, it’s not content marketing. Sure, it makes a good presentation. Good creative always impresses an audience. Maybe it’ll even get the creator featured on a list somewhere. But we shouldn’t be in the business of impressing one another or jockeying for our own PR. We should be shoveling coal into our companies’ sales engines.
