LinkedIn’s approach to content marketing is tied to utility. Photograph: NetPhotos/Alamy
There’s a maddeningly simplistic idea floating around the content marketing space; it goes like this: take any one of dozens of business challenges, then apply content marketing strategy. The result? Frothy success.
Here, a content marketing strategy looks like a remarkable black box that turns any problem into a win.
As someone who’s worked on many content marketing strategies and seen success and failure alike, I can say this with some authority: there is no ingenious, polished mechanism inside that black content marketing strategy box. For that reason – even with the best conditions for success – it can go wrong. There is one way to ensure failure, however: no agreed and clear business goal.
Last year, we saw two high-stakes and high-visibility failures in content marketing, which I will contrast with one relative success. The difference: a better strategic foundation.
Facebook and Tumblr content marketing fail
In 2012, Facebook launched Facebook Stories – a site that produced stories of “people using Facebook in extraordinary ways”. Immediately, the vision sounds like navel-gazing, but a big-name editor was hired, ambitions were high for the site and it was – after all – Facebook, world conqueror.
Paid Content hyped the launch, but even they seemed confused regarding what it was all about: “Is Facebook Stories the next Patch, Flipboard, HuffPo or something else?” went the title.
A year on, Facebook Stories still publishes, even if the point of its publishing is as nebulous as ever. And the big-name editor? He left in March, with this telling epitaph: “I think the biggest mistake they made in bringing me on is this title . . . The company doesn’t need reporters.” That sounds like an admission of strategic failure.
Like Facebook, Tumblr boss David Karp kicked off a branded content project in 2012 – Storyboard. And like Facebook Stories, few understood what it was for. Its executive editor wrote: if you think of Tumblr like a city, then Tumblr Storyboard is like the local newspaper (though we’re more like a magazine) for that city. Get it? Kinda?
If Facebook’s lead editor lost faith in his mission, Tumblr’s lead editor questioned the mission from the start. Tumblr closed Storyboard in March. Karp eulogised: “What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now.” Given the 11-month lifetime, we can assume those accomplishments didn’t amount to too much (at least, not enough).
LinkedIn links content success to a goal
In contrast to Facebook and Tumblr, their tie-wearing older brother LinkedIn has managed to carve out an approach to content marketing that is working. Its acquisitions of SlideShare and Pulse, and launches of LinkedIn Influencers and LinkedIn Today, point to a clear, relevant goal: giving users a reason to come and stay. And it has focused on utility, not self-aggrandisement.
Further, LinkedIn has taken a leaf out of Google’s book in using content marketing to educate and enable brands and agencies to use its platform. The company produces reports, infographics and webinars at speed.
LinkedIn has seen some failures, too: Signal never seemed to catch on, users panned Today early on, and LinkedIn Groups are commonly hit or miss. Given its clear vision of what it is trying to achieve, though, it is not going to pull the plug on content marketing.
Conclusion: get your raison d’etre right
There is a parable in this for brands that are rushing to set up newsrooms, just as Facebook and Tumblr did. Stop and ask yourself: “How exactly will this create business value?” And editors recruited to work in those newsrooms should ask: “What will make it impossible to shut us down in six months, one year, or 10 years?”
A first principle of a content marketing strategy: it should justify itself from a business perspective. Facebook and Tumblr’s forays didn’t do that, even at the concept stage; it wasn’t because content marketing’s a dud for a social network, as LinkedIn demonstrated.
Content marketing strategies need to remain very plastic from the start, but one thing should be nailed down: a clear line of sight to a business objective.
With your eyes on the prize, there’s room to fail, learn and attack again. You’ll likely need those second and third chances.
Ryan Skinner is a senior analyst for content marketing at Forrester Research
Get more articles like this sent direct to your inbox by signing up for free membership to the Guardian Media Network– this content is brought to you by Guardian Professional.
Here, a content marketing strategy looks like a remarkable black box that turns any problem into a win.
As someone who’s worked on many content marketing strategies and seen success and failure alike, I can say this with some authority: there is no ingenious, polished mechanism inside that black content marketing strategy box. For that reason – even with the best conditions for success – it can go wrong. There is one way to ensure failure, however: no agreed and clear business goal.
Last year, we saw two high-stakes and high-visibility failures in content marketing, which I will contrast with one relative success. The difference: a better strategic foundation.
Facebook and Tumblr content marketing fail
In 2012, Facebook launched Facebook Stories – a site that produced stories of “people using Facebook in extraordinary ways”. Immediately, the vision sounds like navel-gazing, but a big-name editor was hired, ambitions were high for the site and it was – after all – Facebook, world conqueror.
Paid Content hyped the launch, but even they seemed confused regarding what it was all about: “Is Facebook Stories the next Patch, Flipboard, HuffPo or something else?” went the title.
A year on, Facebook Stories still publishes, even if the point of its publishing is as nebulous as ever. And the big-name editor? He left in March, with this telling epitaph: “I think the biggest mistake they made in bringing me on is this title . . . The company doesn’t need reporters.” That sounds like an admission of strategic failure.
Like Facebook, Tumblr boss David Karp kicked off a branded content project in 2012 – Storyboard. And like Facebook Stories, few understood what it was for. Its executive editor wrote: if you think of Tumblr like a city, then Tumblr Storyboard is like the local newspaper (though we’re more like a magazine) for that city. Get it? Kinda?
If Facebook’s lead editor lost faith in his mission, Tumblr’s lead editor questioned the mission from the start. Tumblr closed Storyboard in March. Karp eulogised: “What we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now.” Given the 11-month lifetime, we can assume those accomplishments didn’t amount to too much (at least, not enough).
LinkedIn links content success to a goal
In contrast to Facebook and Tumblr, their tie-wearing older brother LinkedIn has managed to carve out an approach to content marketing that is working. Its acquisitions of SlideShare and Pulse, and launches of LinkedIn Influencers and LinkedIn Today, point to a clear, relevant goal: giving users a reason to come and stay. And it has focused on utility, not self-aggrandisement.
Further, LinkedIn has taken a leaf out of Google’s book in using content marketing to educate and enable brands and agencies to use its platform. The company produces reports, infographics and webinars at speed.
LinkedIn has seen some failures, too: Signal never seemed to catch on, users panned Today early on, and LinkedIn Groups are commonly hit or miss. Given its clear vision of what it is trying to achieve, though, it is not going to pull the plug on content marketing.
Conclusion: get your raison d’etre right
There is a parable in this for brands that are rushing to set up newsrooms, just as Facebook and Tumblr did. Stop and ask yourself: “How exactly will this create business value?” And editors recruited to work in those newsrooms should ask: “What will make it impossible to shut us down in six months, one year, or 10 years?”
A first principle of a content marketing strategy: it should justify itself from a business perspective. Facebook and Tumblr’s forays didn’t do that, even at the concept stage; it wasn’t because content marketing’s a dud for a social network, as LinkedIn demonstrated.
Content marketing strategies need to remain very plastic from the start, but one thing should be nailed down: a clear line of sight to a business objective.
With your eyes on the prize, there’s room to fail, learn and attack again. You’ll likely need those second and third chances.
Ryan Skinner is a senior analyst for content marketing at Forrester Research
Get more articles like this sent direct to your inbox by signing up for free membership to the Guardian Media Network– this content is brought to you by Guardian Professional.