Content has always been essential in online marketing. When I started in online marketing now (too) many years ago we called it king. For a good reason: everyone was focused on shiny websites and design but few businesses cared about the content. It made us mad, really. All those budgets marketers spent on websites and then just using them to put up a brochure. Emails without decent content, no focus on the user experience, you name it.
Everything was about what the corporation wanted to say instead of what people wanted to find. And design was more important than actual value. So we said ‘content is king’ (and of course the customer was king as well).
These days, it seems a bit silly to say content is king. It’s not like we live in 1996 anymore and content has become more important in all forms of (interactive marketing). But that does not mean it’s the only thing that matters. Believe it or not: now that content gets the attention it deserves, there’s a new risk: marketers focusing on the content while forgetting what it’s about: the context, the customer, the purpose. Context is essential. If content is king, customer is emperor, context is queen and clear goals are God (change order at will). Though content is crucial it’s how your business and people use it that truly matters. The context within which content is created and shared, is essential for the impact of the content on conversion, interaction, reach, engagement and in the end sales.