Is Content Marketing a Trend?

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I start today’s post off with another question:  Is content marketing a trend?

My answer:  No.

“Content Marketing” is the latest marketing buzz word that is being thrown around amongst marketers, entrepreneurs and digital strategists.  According to Wikipedia, “Content marketing is any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers.”  In today’s digital landscape, this is being done through the use of infographics, white papers, social media, ebooks, blogs, etc.  Wikipedia goes on to say, “Content marketing is focused not on selling, but on simply communicating with customers and prospects.”

Because of the recent explosion of content across digital mediums and platforms; it may feel that content marketing is a trend or fad that has just cropped up.  However, I would argue that content marketing strategies have existed for a long time in traditional marketing mediums.  In print, companies have distributed helpful literature in the form of pamphlets, leaflets and guides.  The literature did not directly sell anything to the consumer, but was helpful information.  It also kept the company top of mind for that consumer when they needed the services offered by that company.  In media, we have seen public service announcements that provided helpful information to the public and were sponsored by enterprises.

Technology has helped to change the marketing landscape and a traditional marketing strategy has now made the leap into the digital age.  So no, content marketing is not a trend.  It has just been repurposed to work in an ever changing, fast moving, and digital world.

Content Marketing: Is Blogging Dead?

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I have seen the question come up of whether or not blogging is dead fairly often recently.  For many, blogging is a part of their content marketing strategy.  For most that are using content marketing as a strategy, blogging is the only method that they are employing.  Blogging has been around for a long time, but in my opinion, only started becoming “popular” and the “thing to do” within the last five years or so.

I believe that it has become the popular thing to do for many reasons:

• The successful careers that have been launched by popular bloggers like Perez Hilton, Bryan Boy and many others.

• The potential to earn passive income/revenue from ads on a blog.

• The SEO benefits that bring traffic and new potential clients/customers to a business.

• The relatively low cost and ease to implement and maintain a blog.

Add to this an increased desire for many to become entrepreneurs or the next big thing, and we have seen an explosion of blogs and bloggers.  Everyone has one.

So, do I think blogging is dead? No, I don’t.

While I feel that the blogosphere and internet are saturated with blogs, I feel that it has turned into a trend that will die.  Wait, didn’t you just say that blogging is not dead?  Yes, that is what I said and believe.  It is the trend itself that I believe will die.  When the next big marketing concept hits, everyone will clamor to jump on that trend and many blogs will be forgotten and will die.  What will remain, will be blogs that were never about just pushing out content for the sake of pushing out content.  What will remain and continue to thrive, will be blogs that were in it because they loved to produce whatever content they were producing, they were passionate about it and believed it was worth while to publish.