Content, the new advertising
Posted by Dylan Brent on 22 May 2008 at 11:55 am | Tagged as: Online PR
Many say content is king, but I would like to take it a step further and say content is god. The line between content and advertising is blurring and one of the major ways to be recognised online is to have content that others seek. The days of advertising to create a buzz and receive hits on your site are decreasing, while Web 2.0 is becoming more popular.
I realise “Web 2.0” is a term loosely thrown around, what I mean by it is that the internet is becoming more of a community. Information and sites are being passed on to friends and other community members through social media sites, email and blogs. People react more to personal recommendations than adverts and pop up banners; and one of the best way to receive a “thumbs up” is through attractive content on your site. In the context of this post, attractive means: useful, informative and fun content that the user will find worthwhile.
Attractive content is spread widely, encouraging users to visit the site and view it for themselves, which generates brand awareness for the site.
“Brand awareness is when people recognize your brand as yours. This does not necessarily mean they prefer your brand (brand preference), attach a high value to, or associate any superior attributes to your brand, it just means they recognize your brand and can identify it under different conditions.”
There needs to be careful consideration when creating brand awareness, as you don’t want your site to be known for the wrong reasons. That’s why the content that attracts users needs to compliment your site and its branding. When users are trying to read an article and a pop up banner jumps into sight without warning (and practically sends them into seizures), it could do more harm than good for that site’s branding (I’m a little biased against banners). Creating attractive content on a regular basis and throughout the site, on the other hand, will generate a preference (brand preference); meaning users would rather visit your site than your competitors.
I won’t go as far as saying advertising has no place in more community focused internet, just that with the increase of popularity in social sites such as; StumbleUpon, Digg and Mixx, more attention needs to be paid to content.
Interesting Dyl, not sure I agree with you on how you reckon content is ‘god’, and not as meager as ‘king’ anymore. Surely, king(content) and queen(links) ensure that the kingdom functions effectively? I think giving content a godly nature is giving less significance to links,and without those, your site may as well be a book in the back of the library that never gets read.
However, I do agree with your stressing the importance of content on site, nice one!
I think content will not be highly regarded as advertising but mainly a method of describing whatever product it is you want people to be aware of. People in general are more likely to be interested in moving pictures or adverts, be it on or offline.
Agreed links are very important (angels), but in the post I was suggesting that with good content and the way the Web is becoming more social through the increased use of social sites (e.g stumble upon, twitter, digg, sphinn and etc) content is spread and if attractive enough will receive inbound links naturally.
I agree, Dylan. Content is definitely the next big thing in advertising, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that “content is god”. Or at least not yet. Advertising is still up there due to it being more visual than content. The truth is that a visual representation of your content, as in a video or image, will be way more attractive than simply content in the form of text. I think a combination of multimedia and content is the perfect mix. It will, in my opinion, keep the visitors coming in.
@Tare Dyce
Pictures moving or not are also considered content. Don’t be fooled into thinking content is just text, you could have a youtube video embed into your page and that would be considered content. My thoughts are if the content is worthy of peoples time and with the Web becoming easier to spread content it attracts users to the site. What better advertising is there than word of mouth?
@ Prevyn Jeftha
When I refer to content I’m referring to text, pictures and video. Content isn’t just text and I agree that sometimes the more visually appealing the more visits it attracts.
Branding is all about sending a strong and consistent message,as a tool social media sites helps you to do just that and social media networks are there for sites to take advantage when looking to build an online presence(brand awareness).
i totally agree with what dylan commented about word of mouth being the best advertising. if your friend comes to you and suggest something that you should check out, 90% of time you would do just that. I personally like sites that have good content on it because i enjoy watching videos and looking at pictures more than reading.