Why Content Is The Most Overrated Element of Internet Marketing

"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

In marketing academia this quote is often used to illustrate "the earth is flat" era of marketing back in the early 1900's. It showed a complete disregard for all other areas of marketing. The idea that "content is king" (content in the form of text, video, images and apps) isn't far of from what Ralph Waldo Emerson said in 1912. This idea is not only wrong, but detrimental. Trying to pin great marketing on a single element is as silly as saying great cooking simply comes down to having the best ingredients. Trust me. I know. If you're food tastes like crap, shopping at Whole Foods Paycheck won't help much.

Why It Happened

After Google started to really tighten the noose around the necks of SEOs that failed to understand the importance of attracting legitimate backlinks, the idea that "content is king" was born. The reaction is understandable. Many SEOs never thought twice about whether or not the content they were putting on their site was actually valuable. They were throwing up crap, spamming backlinks and raking in the cash. Soon the old school SEO party was over. After a few major Google updates SEOs went from underestimating the value of content to overestimating it. You can see 396,000 instances of the "content is king" gospel listed here.

The social media echo chamber is in danger of following suit. A lot people jumped on Twitter only to find out that being a wind bag, taking part in follow scams, and ass kissing via @ and RT wasn't the right long term strategy. This only worked for the early entrants :) I'm glad to see that people are really addressing the value they add, but there is a clear danger of overreaction. I'm seeing a lot of social media folks digging up variations of the "content is king" theme.

Whether it's in the area of SEO or social media, the idea that "content is king" needs to be hosed down.

Why Content is Not King

First, let's all get straight on what "content" is. Content is your product. It's not just text, images and video. In an app store what is the content? It's the apps. Content is what people consume on your site.

Since content on the Internet is basically the product element of the marketing mix it's important to know that there are three other elements of the marketing mix: price, distribution, and promotion. Great products fail constantly due to not properly addressing these other elements, and success on the Internet often has little to do with content or the quality of the product.

We like to believe that the Internet is getting more equitable. That the little guy really does have a chance, but every day I find worthless, cookie cutter affiliate sites raking in millions with overseas content, and industrial strength link building. Try a search for the ever popular education keyword "online degrees." It's filled with thin, worthless affiliate sites full of remixed, scraped content that only list schools that pay for leads. Do you want your kid going to the college with the highest affiliate CPL or the best programs? The competitive SERPs are still filled with absolute trash and "good content" is loosely tied to performance at best.

Do you really think all the A-list bloggers actually have the best content (product)? The best ideas on the Internet? Really? Some do, a lot of them don't, and the ones that don't almost always have a good promotion strategy. Notice how a lot of popular SEOs and gurus have interesting names. There's Sugar Rae, Grey Wolf, Duct Tape Marketing, Fantomaster, Oilman, and Kansas City's very own Mad Hat. Not saying they don't have good content (some of them have great content), but those names also represent strong branding strategies and have a definite impact on their success. Their promotion knowledge doesn't stop with their clever aliases. Just saying there may be more to their success than great content alone.

Even if you take the narrow view of some SEOs that content is just text, you're still wrong. Google's duplicate content filter is embarrassingly lenient, and thousands of sites (like Mahalo) are still making a killing off of scraping. Having unique, textual content is highly overrated.

Social Media Helps, A Little

Some would say that Twitter, Ratings, Reviews, and other social media allow great products to bubble to the top. This does happen in some cases, but to suggest that social media has finally validated Emerson's better mouse trap theory is irresponsible. I'll guarantee you that my next marketing plan will not consist of spending the next 2 years of my life making something great, and then tweeting about it. For every great product that social media drags into the spotlight there are 50 others that never get noticed. I can only read so many tweets, blog posts, and updates. Reviews are great, but first you have to have enough people buy, read or use your product to get enough reviews to look legitimate. It would be fair to say that social media and UGC can kill a bad product very easily, but don't expect them to take you from 0 to 60.

The King of Internet Marketing is...Marketing

This doesn't mean that content isn't important anymore. However, it does mean you need to avoid being naive and believing that doing something great alone will get you noticed. You also need to avoid replacing content with some other king such as relationships or community. As the Internet matures and becomes more competitive, a complete and balanced marketing arsenal will not be negotiable. Excelling in all areas of marketing will be mandatory. There is no "king" of Internet marketing. Marketing isn't "all about" any one thing. To have good marketing you have to be a good marketer.

This means learning as much as you can about promotion, segmentation, strategy, consumer behavior, positioning, differentiation and branding. It maybe even means that you might have to get out of the echo chamber and crack a book. Try Philip Kotler or Jack Trout. These 10 and 20 year old, stodgy marketing paradigms are not fading away as some would suggest, but are becoming more important has the internet becomes hyper-competitive. Those claiming the "old way" is out and "new marketing" is in have overdosed on XML, and need to put the pipe down. If there's anything today's marketers don't get, it's fundamental marketing concepts.