Content is King (of the Internet)

The King of Content

TV mogul William S. Paley made a fortune as a purveyor of content. He understood one simple idea: people love to watch TV. His business model thrived because advertisers were willing to pay for attention and his television network provided tons of it. Paley capitalized on the abundance of the 1950s: attention, spare time, and trust. Specifically, people watched a lot of television in their spare time. They payed attention to television advertisements; and they trusted most of what the advertisers were pushing them.

Times have changed. What was abundant last century is now scarce; and what was once scarce is now abundant. But We can learn from William S. Paley; not by duplicating what he has done but by thinking like him. Paley would understand the importance of capitalizing on the abundances of today’s marketplace.

The End of An Era

We’re hearing a lot about push vs. pull marketing. Mass Marketing defined an era of push marketing. Advertisers pushed ads in front of as many eyeballs as they could - as many times as their budget allowed. In the mass marketing era television reigned supreme because attention could be bought very inexpensively. Now, because the supply and demand has shifted, mass media is dying.

Want My Attention? You Have to Earn it.

The scarcities of the William S. Paleys’ era are now incredibly abundant. Television airtime isn’t scarce any longer; The diminished role of the FCC means it has a more difficult time creating artificial scarcity. In the early years of television there were just three channels; now there are hundreds.

Communication is abundant: We don’t have to rely on Television and Radio for our information. Now with the Internet and Search Engines we can get the information we want right when we want it.

In contrast, what was abundant then is now very scarce.

Spare time is scarce. We don’t have spare time any more because we spend our time: Searching the Internet, watching movies we’ve downloaded, TIVOing, arranging play lists, on the phone, buying stuff online - the list goes on.

Our attention is scarce. We don’t watch television advertisements because our time is too valuable. If we want to learn about a new product or service we look it up ourselves. If you want our attention you’ll have to wait for us to come looking for you.

No Barriers To Entry

Television Network moguls built empires by producing content. We see successful Internet businesses and non-profits follow the same path: Amazons users develop tens of thousands of online book and product reviews; AOL and Weblogs Inc. form a content network that produces blog posts for several top 100 blogs; OpenCongress.org brings together real government data with blog posts and comments to give users a better look at what’s happening in the US government.

Unlike with television, magazines, and radio - the Internet has no barriers to entry; you can join the party anytime. Just keep in mind a simple goal: produce content that people will be interested in - content that tells a story.

Permission Marketing

The Internet, more specifically Social Media and Search engines, enables consumers to retrieve the information they want when they want it. They don’t pay attention to advertisements anymore because they don’t have the time; and now they have the power to avoid them. They have been over-exposed to a marketplace flooded with marketing messages commanding their attention; and ultimately they just don’t care what advertisers have to say. It’s more reliable and more fun to learn from each other than it is to watch television commercials.

So what does this mean for marketers? To be successful you now have to build direct personal relationships with millions of people; sharing your message only with the people who want to hear it. Consumers only listen to messages from sources that have earned their attention and their trust. This type of communication is very difficult if not impossible with traditional marketing but Social Media makes it not only feasible but also easy.

A Glowing Umbrella

They key is delivering relevant content to people, who want it, when they want it. Visualize, for a moment, an umbrella with a glowing handle. This umbrella is just like your ordinary umbrella except it contains a processor, a wi-fi card, and its translucent handle is embedded with LEDs. While you’re brushing your teeth in the morning, the umbrella is accessing the web and downloading the weather forecast. If rain is on the horizon the handle lights up and you know to reach for it as you make your way out of the house. The umbrella improves your efficiency (and your way of life) by providing you with the information you need when you need it. Soon you learn to trust and rely on the umbrella for that information every morning.

Something For Nothing

You build trust with consumers - and influence their decision making processes - by providing them with valuable information that demonstrates your company is knowledgeable. Take a look at the ideas section of the Razorfish website. Here they offer several free high quality research reports. The reports are current, knowledgeable, and give the reader an insight into the culture of the company. Razorfish could charge thousands of dollars for access to these reports, they are that good; but they give them away for free. They do this because the reports establish Razorfish as a thought leader in their marketplace; and by giving the reports away the company develops meaningful relationships with anybody who takes the time to read them.

Information on Demand

By dicing up the web into accessible units Google makes it practical to access the information we want right when we want it. When I perform a search I am telling Google what topic I am currently interested in learning about. I know Google is listening because I get relevant results both organically and in the paid search section.

By sharing this information with marketers Adwords, Google’s paid search program, enables the delivery of advertisements directly to consumers who are interested in receiving them.

If Adwords is a marketers dream then organic results is her nirvana. What do organic results have that paid listings don’t?

Similar to paid listings, organic results deliver relevant content directly to users who are interested in receiving the information.

You don’t have to pay to be there.

You build real internet equity.

You have automatically established some degree of trust with your target consumer.

Trust Engine

People trust Google and they also trust the results they receive from a Google search. Google shows some amount of trust in the websites that make up their organic search results - They show a whole lot of trust in the websites that make up the top 10 results for any search. If Google trusts your website, the people that use Google will trust your website also.

An AdTorrent Example: SamsungTouchScreen.com

AdTorrent uses these same principles when we build a blog. More specifically our blogs contain insightful, current, and relevant content with sharp focus on a specific niche market (usually we target just one keyword). Ultimately our goal is to reach number 1 in the organic Google (and other search engines) search results for each of our blogs. In most cases we achieve this because we provide the information web searchers want - when they want it.

A good example is the Adtorrent blog samsungtouchscreen.com. The Samsung Touch Screen blog is full of blog posts, images, and videos on all of the new (you guessed it) Samsung touch screen cellular phones hitting the market. Samsungtouchscreen.com rocketed to number 1 in the Google organic search results partly because it was ahead of its time (it was created just before the touch screen cell phone craze hit full stride); but mostly it succeeds because it provides relevant, knowledgeable information on a specific topic. Adtorrent has produced identical results for LG, Nokia, HTC, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola brand cell phones.

The sky really is the limit with this method. The Internet can never have enough quality content.