Is Content Still King?

Content was king, until there were too many kings in the kingdom. With too many kings in the kingdom, no one knew who to follow — what was up, what was down, what was real and what was fake.

This created a logjam. What content is worthy of your time, the time that is limited in not only your busy moment, but also in the complete shortness of life?

Fortunately, these days, brands have choices they can make about their content. They choose what types of content they create and how that content is delivered.

Not long ago, people crowded the television to watch the five o’clock news and find out what happened during the day. They would walk outside in the morning to fetch a newspaper to get the full context for the story they heard the night before.

Those days have changed.

When was the last time you learned about a world event, for the first time, from a newspaper? What about from TV news?

Consumption has evolved. This is great for you, the individual, especially when artificial intelligence gets it right. If the AI is working, I receive content about Chicago sports, entrepreneurs, franchising and wacky socks. All things I’m interested in..

But what this means for brands is that content itself is no longer king. Instead, nailing the right personas and audiences and delivering the right content to those targets is paramount. This will remove the need for blanket content, creating instead a content rush that speaks my language to me.

So, where does a brand begin?

1. Set your goals.
2. Decide on your personas and audiences.
3. Create content specific to each of those audiences.
4. Evaluate the data upon delivery (are they clicking, are they engaging, and are you retargeting the ones who do just that?).
5. Shift your mindset to accept more nuanced results than A+B=C. This way, your expectations will be dialed into real results.

Content is indeed still king, but there are a lot of kings. Brands must find the king that stands out in the crowd. That king is the one you follow, not all of the jesters wearing king hats and king clothes.