The Crave
Weekly tips and stories that will help you do your job and make you smile (or groan).
By Julie Alexander March 3, 2022
The Cult of Content Marketing
Sometimes brand and content marketing feels like a bit of a cult to me — like you have to be accepted in before you get the real secrets. If you’re lucky, you get a mentor, but people move on fast in the marketing space, and in my experience mentorships never last long. Last week I met up with a fellow marketer for lunch. We met a number of years ago when he was an intern in a marketing team where I was managing content. I’ve always had fun talking with him, and I’m glad we’ve managed to keep in touch over the years. Besides being thrilled to be meeting up with someone not in my close inner circle at long last (we’re just coming out of lockdown here in The Netherlands) I was also excited to hear about what he’d been up to with work since the last time I’d seen him. It turns out he’s heading up marketing for a fintech startup at the moment — which makes me oddly proud. It’s not like I had anything to do with it… there’s just something about seeing an intern go forth and flourish in the field. At a certain point, I asked him how it was going with developing the brand and content strategy. I’m pretty sure he knew the question was coming, and he sort of gave me a chuckle and a “yeahhh, about that.” Being in a startup, he had been working a one-man marketing show… now a slightly bigger show, but only barely, since he’d been able to get a social media intern and a content writer on board. In his particular niche, community building is crucial, so he’d been spending most of his time and efforts there. Still, he knew he needed to start getting content out there to build up the company’s name and bring in organic traffic. He just wasn’t sure exactly where to start. I remembered the first time I was asked to create a content strategy. Of course I said yes, I’ll do it — and then I proceeded to spend weeks prioritizing other production work because I actually had no clue how to build a content strategy. It wasn’t until I gained access to other people’s content strategies that it really started to make sense. And that took a while. “You can only get so far Googling this stuff,” he told me. “I mean, there’s surface-level stuff out there for SEO and keyword building, but the stuff I really need is so hard to find.” So I gathered a bunch of my old strategies and brand documentation to share with him, all the while wondering why it had to be this difficult. My philosophy has always been if you’re in the position to help someone out and share what you’ve learned so far, do it! Take the time to build relationships and teach whenever possible — after all, the best way to learn is by teaching.
Imagine how much further we could be in the craft of content marketing if we were all consistently supporting and mentoring each other.
What strides would we have already made in the quest for the ultimate audience experience?
“What’s in it for me?” You might be asking yourself. This is this is the big question, isn’t it? And I think it’s the reason why we’re all so stingy with our insider knowledge. Why should we share our strategies and tactics? We might risk helping out our competitors. And after all, we put in the hard work and effort to develop these ideas, so why give them away for free? The real problem here is that we’re all putting in the hard work and effort to reinvent the same content wheel over and over. While my friend is busy trying to figure out how to build a brand and content strategy, he’s not busy further developing the craft of brand and content. As an industry of professionals, we are collectively wasting precious time and creative energy. And who is ultimately worse off for it? Our audiences. Imagine how much further we could be in the craft of content marketing if we were all consistently supporting and mentoring each other. What strides would we have already made in the quest for the ultimate audience experience? By helping others in our field to develop faster, we set the stage for a better, fresher, more future-forward world of content marketing. There will still be stand-out brands because we will all still have to fill out our strategies. We still have to put in the creative work to come up with killer content, and no one else is going to do that for us. But by sharing more, we would all be freer to be more creative. Wouldn’t that be swell? And, if you find yourself in a position where you’re responsible for results and getting those results means doing something you’ve never done before, here’s my advice:
- Do it anyway
- Document the process for yourself so you can break it down later
- Figure out what you don’t know how to do (yet)
- Ask for help
Let’s talk about it together!
Share your thoughts on LinkedIn using #thecravediscussion This week’s topic: What kind of insights resources would you love to see from your fellow content marketers?
Currently craving
- This podcast episode from Content Matters on personalizing at scale was super interesting. Loads of cool stories and tidbits on how to do it right.
- This short but very sweet LinkedIn post from John Bonini. Another reminder about the things that really make content good (hint: it's not more keywords or backlinks).
- I've been working on some video strategy stuff, and I really appreciated this helpful, down-to-earth article from The Marketing Meetup. It has practical tips that make sense and that I will actually use to get a DIY video program up and running.
Julie van der Weele
Head of Brand & Comms
About the author
When I’m not thinking up B2B marketing strategies and processes, you’ll find me in the kitchen, at the yoga studio, or in my favorite chair with a cat and a book.