Everything points to content marketing exploding in 2013. 95% of businesses claim plans to increase content marketing activities this year. Great, huh? Should keep me very busy (and reasonably well paid) with all the new and eager clients beating on my door, right? But anyone who knows me at all also knows cynicism runs through me like Blackpool through a stick of rock.
If you’ve attended any marketing conference over the last few years, you would likely have seen plenty of talk about tools and process and less about genuine creativity. Sure, some extremely creative and ground breaking case studies would be shown. But too often they are presented to illustrate a series of mechanical tasks.
If there is one word I would expunge from the English language tomorrow, it would be ‘solution’. Give me dictatorial power and by sundown all dictionaries would have the single page ripped out. All electronic documents would be subject to enforced ‘find/replace’. Google would automatically de-index any offending webpage.
There are certain words and phrases I find myself using every day that I wish I didn’t have to. ‘Thought leadership’ is one. ‘Community’ is another. Even ‘social media’ sticks in my throat it has become so overladen with misinterpretation, expectation and confusion.
As more businesses realise the importance of quality content marketing, discussions have shifted from whether there should be a corporate blog, etc, to how much can be achieved. And then balancing the results against budget.
I’ve always been pretty strong-willed when it comes to speaking my mind and have never been much of a pack-follower. But I know my behaviour isn’t necessarily the norm. My brother – and I’m sure he won’t mind me saying this – was always far more likely to be led into trouble when we were kids.