Content is King, Marketing is Queen, and I’m the Court Jester
You only have to spend about a week in the social media echo chamber to catch on to the debate between whether content or conversations rule. We can’t seem to agree whether it’s more important to churn out reams of content or chatter all day long.
Why is this a valid question?
It seems silly to me to designate one better than the other. And, usually, I counter with, “Well, if no one says anything useful, we don’t have much to talk about.”
Paul Castain at the Customer Collective hints at why this debate is useless. First, he calls out all the stupid corollaries to “Content is King,” like “then Marketing is Queen.” Or, “then the database is Queen.” Heck, everyone is Queen.
Sure, you need content. You need something to talk about. But you also have to talk about it. When you add “content” and “conversations,” you come up with what Castain calls “engagement.” Yep, another lovely piece of jargon to beat up. Call it “interaction.” Or “social” anything. Heck, call it “pre-sales.”
And this makes me the court jester, because this equation doesn’t give us an answer. We don’t even know what we’re measuring to define success.
Castain takes the content vs. conversation debate a step in the right direction, but he’s not quite there yet. What are you hoping to gain by participating in any social media effort? How about a digital effort? Print? Media relations?
You need to know where you’re going and why before you decide that Twitter, Facebook, live events or media relations will work. And only then will you know what the right mix of talking (publishing) and listening (conversations) will get you where you want to be.
- Date: 06.15.2010
- Category:
- Comments: [0]
