I have now read more than a few articles about the NEW goals for content marketing. It’s all about “becoming a thought leader” they say. Be a leader and the rest will follow. For example, here is an excerpt from a recent Marketing Profs article:
Content marketing continues to be an integral strategy for B2B companies; however, objectives for content strategies are shifting toward thought leadership and educating the market, according to a survey from Curata.
Well, as my 6 year old daughter would say… “SERIOUSLY?!” Is that the NEW strategy?
I have been working with newsletters and content marketing for a long time (well for more than 12 years – which feels like a long time), and the strategy has always been, “write content to be a thought leader and educate.”
So this is nothing new at all. It is more of the same. Leadership and education are pieces of a larger content strategy. And it is your content strategy that needs NEW goals.
So with all due respect to Marketing Profs and all the other thought leaders out there telling you to become a thought leader, I say “time to change your tune”. Becoming a thought leader is NOT a content strategy, it is a result of a good strategy.
In my experience, a good content strategy occurs when an organization has a unique passion for changing the status quo, and a passion that is felt and inspires people. This is a passion that should appear in everything you do – on your blog, in your newsletter, and even in your promotions.
The passion for what you do and why you do it can come from many places:
- It comes from you, the marketer, in your original articles about why the company is passionate
- It comes from your customers who have posted on your Facebook wall, on Twitter, or in your LinkedIn group about why they are passionate about what you do
- It comes from others in your industry who share this same passion.
If you leverage the passion you have for your business in a single focused content strategy, then you will become the thought leader, the educator, and the marketer that you wish to be. People will be inspired to follow your vision and will help you to sell whatever you sell – only more of it.