In 1996, Bill Gates famously said ‘Content is King’. In 1996; Google first launched, 16mb of RAM was impressive, Palm Pilots were the hottest new ‘thing’, the internet was still dial-up and still wasn’t global. Creating content in 1996 was exciting because it was not yet widespread — it was not available to the masses and the consume-at-large wasn’t being bombarded by corporate messaging around the clock. Whereas once, creating and disseminating content took great skill, tools such as social media, automation and the advent of click-bait has opened the floodgates to bad content. This pollution has corrupted Gates’ once brilliant soundbite — unfortunately, Content is no longer King.
To take this to the extreme and say that ‘Content is Dead’ would be inappropriate, but it is true to say that the landscape has become far more nuanced. The champion is no longer the content itself, rather creating the connection that good content can build is what should be strived for. This connection must be a two-way street between the company and the customers — a channel for conversation and comment, outreach and deep listening — for it to be successful. To do this, the foundations must be in place for inbound traffic and feedback; rather than scatter-gunning content at a wall and seeing what sticks, effort needs to be made to pay attention to public comment, fine tune future content based on learnings gleaned, and repeat. Simply put, I believe that classic content creation must evolve to be responsive and become a conversation as opposed to a one-way street of broadcast advertising.
Conventional content can lead to wonderful things. In August, this piece I wrote went viral on LinkedIn and while generating over 210,000 views, it seemed to resonate with people and led to over 550 comments — discussions on the subject matter with fellow entrepreneurs and industry experts alike. It also led me to meet remarkable people, leaders in their field and even led to wonderful work opportunities with some amazing companies. Conventional content can drive attention, while good conversation can drive results.
I’ve found that regularly creating new content surrounding your product, service, or industry is both time consuming and problematic as it requires constantly having new things to say to your audience. This is a primary reason that many content creators have started to repeatedly regurgitate old content to fill the quota, and remain at the top of their audiences’ social media feeds. There is however, another way.
Companies are missing a key opportunity to share their most valuable content — many will read the next paragraph and feel uncomfortable, or even vulnerable at the suggestion, but I believe that implementing this strategy will result in a real and intimate connection with your audience, and lead to great results.
Document and disseminate the process of creation. Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg had kept a blog each week as he built Facebook, or we had a video record of every lecture Dale Carnegie gave starting from his famous debut in 1912 where he encouraged students to speak about something that ‘made them angry’. A glimpse into the process of building an idea, company, and brand can be as valuable (if not more so) as seeing the shiny finished product to an audience. The decision-making process sheds light on the very core behaviors — it is rough, intimate, and personal, but I believe it is invaluable to those interested in your field.
This concept is not my own — I came across this idea from legendary marketeer Gary Vaynerchuk a couple of months ago, and it resonated with me but took until now to process what it means. I wish I’d had the foresight to document my last year — it’s been a wild ride. I left working at Israel’s top PR agency Headline Media to start freelance marketing, started and closed my own startup in the journalism space, went back to freelancing and am now starting to build another company (watch this space). The people I’ve met have blown my mind and taught me things that with hindsight, I’d have loved to share with fellow marketeers and entrepreneurs.
With this in mind, I will continue to publish my opinions on marketing strategy both here and on Medium, while also documenting the process of building a new startup from day one and what goes into being a marketing and communications consultant. I’ll be doing this on Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat, and encourage anyone interested in entrepreneurship or marketing to follow and be in touch — it is a two-way street.
I’ll be flying to San Francisco from Tel Aviv at the end of December and plan to meet a bunch of interesting people — if you’re around that area and would like to meet for a coffee, be in touch!
