I'll have the plain bagel
Oddly enough, the everything bagel I enjoyed this morning (we should have at least one bagel related post) reminded me of a recent post by Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, titled “Content Marketing for Professional Services: Does It Cannibalize Your Business?”
Joe writes, “Today, a blog is just a ticket to the ball game. 65% of B2B companies have blogs today (according to CMI and MarketingProfs research). In order to be the leading expert for your industry, you need to take story ideas and adapt them to channels, like blowing a dandelion in the wind. For example, with the Content Marketing Playbook, although the eBook was the main content product, we produced a SlideShare version, multiple podcasts, multiple blog posts, a news release, an e-newsletter version, snippets in our print magazine, guest blogs, promotions on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more.”
While I agree with just about every point Joe makes, he also points out that you should “know your niche,” know your audiences,” “know your budget” and “know your metrics.”
If you’re paying attention to all these things then ideally you have a well-defined audience with specific needs and objectives, and like most businesses your resources are limited. As a result, maybe a print version that’s promoted on LinkedIn is the best approach. Maybe only a SlideShare version makes sense. My point is, content marketing doesn’t always require adapting to numerous channels.
Maybe Joe isn’t suggesting that you should always repurpose content to multiple channels, “like blowing a dandelion in the wind,” but I got the impression he is.
His post left me thinking that just like the everything bagel, when it comes to content marketing, our tendency is to want it all. Since we can’t always be certain how our audiences will prefer to consume content, with so many options available, let’s throw everything out there and see what sticks.
I would argue that sometimes the plain bagel tastes just as good. As long as it's from Ess-a-Bagel.
Comments (1)
Michael Sheldon - April 3, 2012 3:38 PM
Maybe this is more of a west coast problem, but I always refuse to eat any bagel variety invented after 1968. This includes blueberry, cranberry, jalapeño, pizza, etc. I checked and none of these varieties are on the ess-a-bagel menu. I mention this in support of Tim's point, which I'd like to take one step further: Tim notes that covering every conceivable channel is less important than covering the right ones really well. And, since we're supposedly talking about "content," isn't content what you have to say to your audience--the message, the benefits, the value proposition--all that old-fashioned stuff, that somehow never seems to go out of style?