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Content is King
Have you ever noticed that much of today's content is stale? What I
mean by that is that all media -- TV, newspapers, web sites -- tend to
repeat themselves. A lot. Take the television show "24" as an example.
During its first three seasons it was hands down one of my favorites.
The problem was, I quickly realized that there were only so many times
that "Jack Bauer" could save the world from plots to kill the
President, bio terrorism threats and of course nuclear holocaust.
I recently came to a similar conclusion with one of my favorite magazines, This Old House.
To the editors' credit, they do a nice job covering the topic of home
improvement and their "how to's" are extremely helpful. However, I
realized that after subscribing for five plus years, there are only so
many ways a publisher can spin "how to make your lawn greener" or "how
to plan a bigger kitchen in the same amount of space."
Before I
get carried away, the intention of this post is not to rant. On the
contrary, I want to point out a couple of examples of
companies/publications that do a great job of keeping their content
fresh. The reason I like these companies is that they make me think
outside the box. Of course they deliver educational content that helps
me do my day-to-day job as well, but they always manage to put a new
and exciting twist on their content.
Our first "content hero" is
Forrester Research and the specific "content" that I'm so impressed
with is their annual Finance Forum. Even though some of their content
does repeat from year to year, they do do a great job at getting
innovative speakers. This year's "provocateur" was the President of
Wal-Mart's Financial Services division and her topic was Wal-Mart's
controversial bank endeavor." As a former Fidelity employee, one might
ask, "what could someone at an industry leading financial services
company possibly learn from Wal-Mart?" The answer to that question is
easy -- plenty! This is a company that is responsible for 1% of the
countries GDP and now they want to move into banking? Yikes!
A second example of a "content hero" is the once very hip, then not so hip, and now moderately hip, magazine Business 2.0.
Without waxing too poetic, I will tell you that I read every issue from
cover to cover. Many of the articles are about things like "how the
science department at the University at Wisconsin is attempting to
improve cream cheese" (that was a real article by the way.) The reason
the magazine is interesting is because the editors make me think about
things and my life, and how I do my job, in a different way.
Anyway,
the point I'm trying to get at is that keeping content fresh and
innovative is more important than ever in today's environment. We're
bombarded with so many messages from so many different media that
readers and viewers can afford to tune your content out because they
have so many other places to turn. Publishers, editors, and producers,
must all challenge themselves to create value in their readers/viewers
lives. If they don't, things just get stale. And when they get stale,
nobody pays attention. That's why content is king!
Mon, Jul 10 2006
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