IMHO: The Sad Demise of The Content Marketing Hype

I never get tired of ignoring the latest content marketing tricks. Basics like subheadings, paragraphs, or…wait for it – the use of pictures (!) get celebrated as though they were a new invention which will get readers all excited. People hardly dare to blog on the topic anymore because there are just too many pseudo-tips.

Very few articles on the topic actually have something new of offer. Mostly they just say what anyone who went to school should already know. At the moment, content marketing is rarely more than a basic writing course. Now that the trend is slowly subsiding, there are a lot of unaddressed questions.

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The last rites shouldn’t be held yet. Most of these tips still haven’t reached the crux of the matter: the online medium. Most pieces of advice could relate just as well to a chemist catalogue.

It would be much more exciting if someone would start thinking about how to write better for the web. This could include for instance:

• How to create search engine friendly texts
• How digital storytelling works
• What potential the combination of video, photo, widget and text has to offer
• How to present up-to-date reading experiences with the help of web design.
• How to capture the attention of readers with the (proven) attention span of a gold fish
• How content and commerce can mould into one unit
• How to take into account the fact that the majority of content is read on mobile end devices.
• Exactly how to write for the different social media nad e-commerce platofrms.
• How to successfully incorporate user generated content.

Above all, content marketing should be thought of in combination with the goal of creating up-to-date digital content.

Sadly, there an absolutely pointless separation of the disciplines reigns in people’s minds. In the real world, this difference doesn’t exist.

Those who write web content, that could be for web portals, online shops, or a company’s website, have to have a firm understanding of mobile, social media, SEO and CRO over and above their writing skills if they want to do CM well.

Right now, it feels like the content marketing hype is dying down again. A pity, because this is happening before the topic could be developed seriously.

What topics do you think haven’t been addressed by the content marketing hype yet?