Thursday, February 20, 2014

Content is King, but distribution is queen


















I've been a big fan of Gerry McGovern who is a leading international content expert and consultant for knowledge management on the web. He has written many books and in one of his book titled 'Content Critical,' McGovern stresses on the importance of content. McGovern states that readers come to the website to gather or review content, rather than specifically to search or find content (McGovern, G 2001). In an interview to Dr. Ing. Artur P. Schmidt of Wissens Navigator, Gerry McGovern says that the web is a giant container for content and that it is a place where we go and get our content. He says that information flows like milk on the web today and that it has to be distributed before it becomes worthless.
In his article Great Content is Not Enough, Jonathan Perelman of BuzzFeed says, "Content is king, but distribution is queen and she wears the pants." How true, there is no point having great content, if you do not know whether this content is reaching the desired audience. Today there is so much of content online and there is a possibility that your content will get lost in the web. In Jun 2000, there were less than eight million websites. By Dec 2013 that number is more than 750-million and that number only seems to be increasing (Pollitt, C. 2013). This only goes to show how difficult it is for marketers to get their content read. There is so much of good content that goes unread on the internet.
Rather than producing more and more content, marketers should focus on content distribution plans. On his blog Ryan Skinner writes that today marketers invest large sums to create quality content. But he says although quality content is good, the content is not being discovered (Skinner, R. 2013). In his report on distribution of branded content, Skinner suggests the following,
  • 1.      Brands can actually step down content production and step up distribution to get better results.
  • 2.      An ecosystem of vendors have cropped up to help marketers drive distribution of branded content.
  • 3.      The most effective promotions often come from doubling-down on past successes.
  • 4.      Better distribution improves content’s quality, as the feedback cycle accelerates.
 So the bottom-line is its better to have a balance between content and content distribution. It’s like having a great resume but if you don't send that power-packed resume to potential employers, no one really will know what you are capable of doing.

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