Is content still the king???

You carefully choose an ideal topic for your target audience who are desperate to know more about it. You toil hard and pour every ounce of your creativity, insight and knowledge to give it an interesting angle. The content radiates authority and strikes a chord with your readers. In short you have written a killer post with all the ingredients necessary to make it an instant hit. You submit your post to various social media and bookmarking websites i.e Digg, StumbleUpon, Sphinn, etc. Then you wait in the hope of making the headlines and nothing happens. Somewhere, something went terribly wrong. But what could have possibly gone awry, when everything was executed with perfection – a question many of us would have faced in the past.

‘Content is king’, an adage that has been around for many years and has imparted the desired outcome time and again. Content that is informative, engaging, useful and unique is proven to entice readers but the rules of the game are changing. Apart from ‘what you know’, ‘who you know’ seems to be playing a crucial part. Having great content is only half the battle, marketing and promoting it is the other half.

People might argue that this adage will only stand true in the blogging arena and not for websites. An attractive website with good content will lure visitors and play a vital role in getting more business. But what if your website is ‘invisible’ to online users. It would be similar to building a plush hotel with all the modern amenities, without telling people where it is and how to find it. The hotel will have low (people who would accidentally discover it) or no customers for the simple reason that it cannot be found by customers willing to stay in it. Had the hotelier marketed it well, people would have known about it and stayed in it for one of their holidays. And before I go any further, let clarify what I mean by ‘content’. According to me anything written in black and white, videos, graphical representations, or for that matter anything that conveys an idea should be deemed as content.

Talking about search engines, crawlers are not in position to judge quality of the content on its own. It uses factors such as links pointing to the content to make this decision and would remain this way, at least in the near future. More links equates to high quality score. On the other hand visitors are capable enough to judge the quality of content but this would only happen if they get to read it. Online visibility – Precisely. In a nutshell, no matter how good the content is, it would require a good push. This is where marketing steps in and ‘who you know’ can provide impetus to your marketing efforts. Once people know about your content and it suffice all the characteristics of good content, it would deliver the desired impact. However the ‘who you know’ concept is more suited for the social media arena.

“Is content still the king???”; my answer would be “not entirely”. Looking at the statement in isolation - “YES”, looking at the statement in a broader perspective - “NO”. This however does not diminishes the importance of content.

You may have a different viewpoint altogether and therefore I would encourage you to share it with us.