It’s the Content, Stupid!

by Lisa Allocca

I believe it was James Carville that coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” back in the early 1990s during Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush. Carville originated that phrase because Bush had focused his outbound communications on foreign policy issues and had not adequately addressed the economic issues at the time when the country had just gone through a recession. Clinton ultimately succeeded in unseating the once-thought unstoppable Bush by focusing on the issues that his constituency really cared about – the economy – the one that hit home.

I find strong parallels to what is happening in today’s technology market in terms of the marketing spend. Depending on whom you talk to – newer marketing tools such as Social Media, SEO, and inbound marketing are going to replace every other marketing tool that ever existed.

But they are really missing the point. Just like Bush missed the point back in the 1992.

Prospects value accurate and relevant information. That is what propels them through the buy cycle.  

The tools in the marketing mix are just that.  Tools to engage prospects and customers in conversation.

They won’t work, they will not generate qualified leads and they will not promote your brand without regular, programmatic, compelling content. And that is the hard part. Creating and delivering a steady stream of fresh content is a challenge for most organizations.

Here is a case in point.

I recently worked on a project with a start-up company that has a tool that will find “influencers” on the social web for a particular technology. The methodology used seemed to be very logical and thorough. We identified keywords and we weighted reach, buzz and relevance and the tool did its thing and turned up over 700 influencers in a particular technology area. I wanted to see who out of these 700 bloggers had the most buzz, which one was being picked up and linked to the most. Isn’t that the definition of a social media influencer? Isn’t that what bloggers are striving for?

The result was fascinating.

It turns out that the “most influential” blogger in this technology was based in Eastern Europe (the power of the Internet!). He was prolific – writing dozens blog entries per day, every day.  He had mastered the art of writing SEO-optimized content, including the top five key words in this technology space in the first few sentences of every entry. His blog had a Twitter feed and it also showed up on Facebook. He was being linked-to from all over the web. Each entry had several comments. Portals were aggregating his content. He had mastered all of the blogging techniques that would help raise his blog’s visibility. By almost any existing technology measurement, this blogger should be considered influential.

But when you actually read his content beyond a cursory glance, much of the content was inaccurate and outdated. That is when it hit me.

It’s the content, stupid!