Content Marketing Strategy - What's the Point with Social Media?

After my Brainzooming workshop on creating fantastic content at the Social Media Strategies Summit, one attendee took exception to it. His point of contention was the model we use that suggests brands think about content creation as if they were television networks. The point is television networks have been successfully creating and curating content for years; they have also historically found a balance between entertainment and commercial messages that still attracts audiences.

In our view, for brands struggling with creating a significant amount of audience-focused content, thinking about a television network is helpful. Nearly everyone is familiar with and sees comparable television network examples that stimulate new ideas and strategies.

He told me later (both in conversation and on the workshop review) that I'm the only speaker on content marketing or social media strategy he's EVER heard make this case. I personally think that's good considering all the me-too crap you hear at conferences.

The challenge to this apparently unique perspective on content marketing strategy focused on two areas:

1. TV is losing viewership so what television networks do isn't solid advice
2. Social media held the promise of completely new ways of interacting with audiences, and the TV model is inconsistent with that promise

It's true that television viewership is declining. It’s also true that social media is / was supposed to be different. Despite this, I still stand behind our recommendation for thinking about creating content as a TV network would.

Why?

TV networks have always had to:

• Consider the audience and what it likes in making content decisions
• Wade through many more content ideas than the audience will ever see just to fill its content calendar
• Use entertainment value as a major factor in getting an audience to stick around for commercial messages (whether paid commercials or product placements)
• Promote their programming to help build an audience
• Package and repackage content in multiple places to attempt to cost-effectively reach targeted audiences

While these five point don’t account for an entire content marketing strategy (which is why we share other models in the workshop), most brands struggling with WHAT content to create and curate would be so much further ahead if they did just these five things better.

While I understand where the audience member was coming from and will acknowledge his perspective in future workshops, I'll stand with our model for now as a big jump start for brands that simply don't currently understand content marketing strategy. – Mike Brown

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