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We’ve mentioned that one of the things we do ’round these parts is read everything we can find about social media, and how it applies to marketing.
And we frequently find things reported that we’ve already talked about… Heh. We tend to break out our little beagle buddy when that happens, to let you know we’re (once again) celebrating that we were right.
Well, much as we hate to get scooped, we are occasionally beaten to the punch.
Today we found a rebuttal to something we read over the weekend and didn’t get around to posting about because… well… it was the weekend. All work and no play, y’know? But we enjoyed the rebuttal almost as much as we would have enjoyed writing one ourselves… so we’re gonna share.
Marketing Pilgrim ran a piece Saturday called “Content Marketing Is B#$*!t!” In it, Joe Hall recommends firing consultants who say you need better content. Even if they’re right.
Call up your consultants, and fire them. Seriously, if they tell you, you need new content, and you agree, fire them. Then, fire yourself and get a real job. Because if you need better content that means that your products and services can’t sell themselves.
He uses his grandmother’s 70 year-old mixer to make his case – since the mixer wasn’t built by content marketing, and she’s still using it. Or something.
In the end content marketing is BS because no amount of content in the world, can replace the satisfaction of a quality product or service.
We definitely had an opinion about this… But again, weekend. Heh.
This afternoon, we found a post by Lisa Barone at Business Insider that hit on much of what we were thinking… and with a snarky tone that reminds us of… well… us.
It’s arrogant to think that all you need to do is Be Awesome and people will flock to you.
If that was the case, you wouldn’t need marketing or SEO or PR at all. We could all just rely on the Good Idea Faeries to do the work for us.
(For the record, if we ever run across a Good Idea Faery, we’re going to scoop her up in a net and keep her in a bird cage. We’re serious.)
Barone does a good job of explaining why content media is important, even with an amazing product.
A great product may absolutely dazzle your audience once you put it on stage for them to see and fall in love with it. But let’s not forget, content marketing is how you build the stage.
But what do we mean by content marketing?
Barone defers to Copyblogger, and they define it this way:
Content Marketing means creating and freely sharing informative content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.
They also emphasize the importance of social media in content marketing.
Social media didn’t create content marketing, but it’s an unsurpassed tool for getting it distributed. On the flip side, great content gives social media life, by giving people something more interesting to talk about than what they’re ordering right now at Starbucks.
So content marketing may not be effective at building a mixer. We’ll concede that point.
But content marketing, combined with a quality product and customer engagement, can build a community that’s over 45,000 members strong.
We’re talking about KitchenAid’s Facebook page, in case you wondered. Contests, recipes, polls and products… Maybe Hall should have taken a look before using his grandma’s mixer as an example.
(For that matter, rather than brag that the poor lady is using a seventy-year-old mixer, maybe he should “like” their page and try to win her a new one. Just sayin’.)
Even with a product as amazing as a mixer that lasts seventy years, KitchenAid “gets” content marketing, social media, and customer engagement.
Do you?