Community is King

This is the only Game of Thrones that should matter to you right now.

I’m going to tell you a story about a game of thrones — and how the rightful king has taken power. Then I’m going to tell you why it matters.

Here’s the pretext.

The internet is flooded with content. 2 million blog posts, like the one you’re reading right now, are published every single freaking day. Many of them are awesome and add value to the world, most are probably rubbish— all of them are noise.

The era of “Content is King” is over. I think it’s time for Content to step down, retire in the countryside, and let a new king rise to power: “Community”.

To succeed as a digital marketer or in any kind of online business today, we need to learn how to thrive in the new empire.

Let’s get to know our new monarch. But first… let’s take a look back at a tumultuous history to understand how we got here.

The Rise and Fall of the Content Empire

How did Content come to rule the digital marketing world, anyway?

I guess it depends on how far back into human history you want to go but from where I’m sitting, it started with search engines.

When search engines emerged as the primary portals to the online world during the nascent days of the world wide web, their purpose was indeed to index content and make it, well, searchable. They were simply the fastest and easiest tools for people to find the information they were looking for. And in the beginning the real power behind search engines was keywords.

It didn't take long for people making the content to realize that by messing around with keywords they could easily manipulate the search engines and in doing so earn a wealth of traffic and visibility. Since the mid-90's search engines have been the top websites on the internet, so as a marketer being #1 in the search results was simply the place to be if you wanted to get traffic. And so began the sweeping era of search engine gaming — the practice of outsmarting search engines by taking advantage of their technical limitations (otherwise known as SEO).

In some ways Content was already king by then. Bill Gates is said to have coined the phrase “Content is King” in the modern sense in a 1996 essay. But because search engines were so easily manipulated, Content was really more of a king-in-waiting.

Yes, some popular publications existed early on who churned out good quality content. But search engines were the main portals to the web. So it was a time when the true rulers, Keywords and Backlinks (the main signals used by search engines) were the real barbarian overlords.

Then some amazing things happened that turned the balance of power in favor of Content.

In the mid-2000's search engines started to become capable of understanding language and the web in a more complex way, creating a need for internet marketers to take Content more seriously. Keywords and backlinks were still powerful but they weren't enough anymore. Now marketers truly needed real content.

And that’s how Content became the king, not just in name but in practice.

The thing was, Content was kind of a crappy king at first, because marketers could still get away with publishing garbage content and still trick the search engines into giving them top rankings. It was still possible to outsmart the machine. So it was a wobbly monarchy.

Then, in around 2010, the rise of mainstream social media began which created a big new way for people to discover content without using search engines at all. That made Content all the more powerful, because for the first time there was an accessible way for marketers to get great content noticed without any search rankings.

And then, in around 2013 — just a couple of years ago — semantic search emerged. This was a huge leap in search engines being able to really understand the nuances of language and content — and suddenly a two-decades-long era of search engine manipulation started coming to a close.

Since semantic search arrived, trying to outsmart search engines has become increasingly fruitless as a marketing tactic. The machine is just too damn smart.

By the point in history where semantic search arrived, Content was practically a God-king. Google launched an all-out genocide on the low quality filler content that was so prevalent at the time (remember all those useless how-to articles and recycled nonsense blog posts that didn't actually say anything?).

Today only the great content survives. But even that’s not good enough anymore.

So what happened? That explains how the Content empire arose but… how did it fall?

The Community Renaissance

Let’s talk about the story of Community.

All throughout the years Community has been a member of the royalty. When the Internet was first piped in to my family home in the 90's, one of the first things we did was join the local Bulletin Board System (BBS) where we could interact with other people in our village (yes, I actually lived in a village).

The problem was, the communities were so small, the information so limited. Online communities were niche. Search engines were so much more interesting because they opened up the whole world.

So even early on Community mattered, but it was more of an Archduke. It had power, but its power was very limited.

Myspace started to change things in the mid-2000's with a social network that everyone could participate in. It was Facebook in 2010 that really caused the movement that brought practically everyone together into one big inclusive online community.

Basically, Facebook became the global BBS.

Today, search engines and social media are pretty much head-to-head as far as being the most popular websites (and, being widely accessible to everyone, the most important for marketers to reach audiences).

Social media, as far back as the original BBS, has always been naturally conducive to Community. So the mainstream rise of social media in this decade gave new power and influence to Community.

But here’s where it starts to get really interesting!

Search. We already established that search has been the heavy influencing force on the web since the early days. And I think the geniuses behind search engines have known all along that Community is why the internet exists in the first place.

The problem for early search engines was that communities were hard to identify using a machine. Google co-founder Larry Page took the first crack at it with his idea about using backlinks as popularity signals, but it was so easy for marketers to fake a real community by artificially creating backlinks. So, Community remained relegated to Archduke because search engines were so popular and useful, but still technically limited.

But now, those technical limitations are gone.

Hold on a second, let’s just clarify for a second what I’m really saying here….

Today, search is community. That’s because, today, search engines are genuinely capable of giving preference to content that exists within a strong community.

Think about it for a second…

For the first time in internet history, Community isn't restricted by technical limitations. Search engines and social media combined are by far the most popular places on the web, and now they both serve Community equally.

Whoa…

Suddenly, Community just got a hell of a lot more powerful. Yes, powerful enough to overthrow the old king.

What a plot twist!

Who is this… Community?

Hmmm, so let’s get to know our newly crowned ruler then…

Seth Godin popularized the concept of communities as tribes. Humans are tribal by nature, the internet allows us to fulfill our tribal instincts, and therefore the internet is a big tribal landscape. Yes, it’s true.

Tribes form naturally on social media through commenting, sharing, liking, following and so on. That part is easy to understand.

As far as the search engines juggernauts go… Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt famously said in 2008 that “brands are the solution” to fixing the “cesspool” that was the Internet at that time. I think what he really meant by “brands” was really “tribes”. After all, brands have been tribes as far back as John Deere in 1895. Today they are pretty much synonymous. Brands are built around tribes, and tribes have a distinctive brand.

Since then Google has created a huge and powerful toolkit to identify brands — and therefore tribes — and has gotten really good at it. And they’ll give the tribes preference on the soapbox.

So Community is tribes. Tribes are brands.

That means having a unique identity. A unique voice. A uniquely identifiable and communicable contribution to the world. An interest or perspective or worldview that is shared with other people. A purpose for being a part of — or better yet leading — the people who share that interest.

That’s Community.

The New Role of Content

So Content isn't the king anymore. But that doesn't mean it’s dead. Far from it.

Content, after all, is the Internet. No content, no Internet. Just a bunch of cables and microchips and blank screens.

But, just like those fiber-optic cables and data centers, content is part of the infrastructure now. Which is where it always belonged, really.

Content is fundamentally necessary (and not just content, but great content).

But it has to be more than that.

It has to exist within the tribal context. It has to give something to the tribe. It has to have some kind of purpose within the community. Otherwise, no one will ever see it. No one will ever care. And you’ll have wasted your time making it.

Content has to serve Community now.

That’s why Community has to be the new king.

What Does it Mean for Us Peasants?

It’s simple.

In the past, you could game the system to get noticed.

Today…

No tribe? Nobody cares about you anymore.

Can you get traffic without a tribe? Sure. You can pay for ads and create strategic partnerships to gain exposure within existing communities. That will get you started.

But if you don’t build a community of your own, then the bulk of the Internet, the organic web, will be closed to you. Go ahead and publish all the content you want, but if you don’t respect Community the king won’t let you through the gates. You’ll be left to haunt the outskirts, wondering what it’s like inside the wall.

The power has shifted.

Bow to the new king: Community.