I remember about a year or so ago when I promised myself (and my audience) that I was going to harness my blogging. I started getting into posts that were longer than necessary. Couple that with my penchant for run-on sentences and, well, it gets kinda rough at times. I promised I would cap myself at 250 words. Why? It was too many words and too much “talking”.
Today, I am focusing on content in its purest sense more than ever. As a result, I have been dipping my toe into the industry for the past several months. Needless to say, it looks like I may not be the only one having trouble with words.
Image by jovike via Flickr
I have tried to find definitions of online content and keep bumping into the idea of content curation. (Even typing the word makes my Word program identify it as something that is not correct or normal–maybe Microsoft is smarter than I thought.) I also find a lot of what I call $50 words. Words that are more comfortable in academia than they are in real life. Words that are more about impressing the industry than they are about moving anything forward. I am talking about words and phrases like “predefined sets of criteria,” constituents, keystones–and the list goes on.
What these words do is show the simple truth about what we are doing around content, content marketing and content (gulp) curation. We are trying to make content as confusing as search marketing and other Internet marketing practices. Why? Beats me. I guess it’s to create “barriers to entry” (did you like that one?) into the industry. Maybe it’s job security. I don’t really know.
These big dollar terms try to cover up the one fact about all of this content theory: You don’t need a marketing degree or any other degree to do it. You just need to care about what your audience is interested in and work to satisfy it.
Wow, there you go. I just blew the lid off the content marketing “industry.” Write what people like to read, make videos about what they find interesting, and talk to them in social networks like they are human beings and not prospects. I came up with all that and I didn’t call myself an expert once! Woo-hoo!
In this day and age of so much technology and so much noise, it is more important than ever to follow the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Why? Because you will stick out like a refreshing sore thumb among the $50 word set. Oh and you may actually get some work done with a client or two along the way.
Here’s to keeping it simple and avoiding the great word cover up that is “content marketing.”
(By the way, I have once again slaughtered my “250 word” rule and I apologize. I just have a big mouth.)
