This post is part of Rassak’s “YouTube Tuesdays Plus” featuring mini case studies of marketing videos (sometimes we look at other digital media too). New on Tuesdays. Don’t miss one, subscribe.
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You hear a lot of talk these days about “Content Marketing.” Content used to mean the stuff in a magazine or on TV or the radio that was not an ad. It was the content or stories that caused people to tune in or subscribe so that the magazine or TV network could then sell ads. No content, no audience. No audience no ads. No ads no money. No money, no reason to be in the publishing business.
It’s really no different today it’s just that now we’re all in the publishing business. This cool little video series from Intel illustrates this nicely.
In the old days (as in like three or four years ago—and let’s be clear this still happens a lot today) Intel would hire a “media” agency to figure out what publishers had an audience that might buy Intel’s products. Then they’d hire a “creative” agency to make ads to put on those websites or magazines. Intel relied on journalists to create stories of interest to potential customers and then paid to wrap their ads around the content.
With the rise of “self-publishing” platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, etc. this changes. Companies can develop a following of their own and wrap their own ads around their own content. Hence the term content marketing. Because a company that just pumps out “buy-our-stuff” ads on their social media channels will put their audience to sleep and/or just drive them away.
So the trick is to create useful or funny or interesting stuff (content) — in other words do what a journalist does.