At WordWrite, it’s no secret that we are champions of an authentic business story that describes in great detail exactly why potential clients should hire you or why potential customers should purchase your services.
The continuing evolution and popularity of content marketing has opened new doors for companies and brands that want to showcase their value to target audiences. Also known as “sponsored content,” “branded content” or “native advertising,” it all boils down to the practice of a brand, company or organization paying to have content appear in a specific media outlet in a format that closely approximates independently reviewed editorial content. (It looks like an article, but it’s really an ad.)
The quality of this content can differ and vary, as News360 VP of Business Development Regan Fletcher wrote in response to my blog on content marketing last year. Not all content marketing is created equal, he said.
“To label all of them as simply ‘paid’ is, while technically accurate, reducing them to their lowest common denominator,” Fletcher said. “It’s like describing the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Mateo Bridge as simply ‘bridges.’ (It’s) technically accurate but hardly a fair description of each one.”
My intent wasn’t to lump all content marketing under one umbrella. I wrote back that the main point of the blog concerned PR agencies with advertising arms engaging in this practice while not openly acknowledging the difference between content that is paid for versus content earned through news value. There are certainly differences in quality and craftsmanship for sponsored content, but it is still paid content, no matter how well produced.
I wrote then and reiterate now that if a PR pro at an agency finds himself or herself working on brand journalism requiring payment for placement, then he or she is not working in PR. That person works in advertising.
But if content – in whatever forms it takes – is king (and we believe it is), then what exactly constitutes “quality” content? Two recent surveys reveal “educational” and “trustworthy” to be critical differentiators in defining “quality” content.
As reported in Mediabistro’s PRNewser, according to a poll conducted by CMS software producer Kentico, “74 percent of the general public trusts content from businesses that aim to educate readers about a particular topic.”
Article author Patrick Coffee notes the key word in those results is “educate,” and “Customer trust goes down by 46 percent when content can’t be corroborated with third-party sources.”
Now who can provide third-party validation? It certainly can come in the form of content your thought leaders and internal experts create in the form of white papers, case studies or blogs. It also can come from client and customer testimonials. But our experience tells us the news media – in whatever form people consume their news – still stands as the ultimate platform for unbiased content delivery.
In fact, the very next day after he reported on the Kentico results, Coffee wrote an article downplaying the value of paid media. The piece was enlightening in that it reinforced the notion of how people give content marketing the benefit of the doubt if the information is educational and validated by someone other than the company promoting it.
The caveat in a different survey from Insights in Marketing (and boy is it a huge qualifier) was that the majority of the public trusts educational content marketing that is not geared explicitly toward sales, but only as long as it doesn’t come from a marketing or advertising company. To wit, “Only 26 percent of participants agreed that advertisers/marketers are ‘trustworthy.’ ”
As an agency that believes your business “Story” with a capital “S” trumps the name of your brand, we’ve always held strongly to the view that “thought leadership” marketing is paramount in demonstrating trust and credibility for any business in any industry.
The capital “S” story starts from a place of truth and can be told by authentic, credible sources within your organization. It can be validated easily and its effectiveness continuously measured by the impact it has on your key audiences.
We realize expert content takes many forms and provides value to an organization’s key target audiences across multiple platforms, not just articles from reporters.
But at the end of the day, it remains evident that while content is king, the key to success and profitability stems from the reliability of your business story, the credibility of those communicating it and the integrity of the platforms on which the content is shared.
We stand ready and available to talk more how your business can create the right type of content to reach key audiences in the spaces they go to make decisions.
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Jeremy Church is vice president of media and content strategies for WordWrite Communications. He can be reached at jeremy.church@wordwritepr.com and on Twitter @churchjeremy.
