"The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do." — Michael E. Porter, "What is a Strategy?" Harvard Business Review, November-December 1996.
Marketers are abuzz about content marketing. It feels like 2010 again, when every marketer was busy creating social media strategies, executing across numerous social platforms and trying to feed the social monster.
Nowadays, the focus has changed, but the problems are similar. Most marketers are producing lackluster content for too many channels; haven't developed a solid, loyal following in at least one channel; and target too many audiences without an effective focus on any one. Trying to be everything to everyone is the fastest road to the ruins of marketing: deserted Twitter feeds, empty Facebook channels and content that is distributed everywhere but reaches nobody.
With today's technology, marketers can publish in thousands of places without any major effort. It takes just a few steps: Create a presence on platforms and share your content everywhere. But just because you can do this doesn't mean you should. If you want to be successful in 2015 and beyond, less is more when it comes to content marketing.
DEVELOP LOYAL, OPT-IN AUDIENCES
The New York Times didn't try to be a newspaper, radio station, podcaster, video distributor and event producer when they launched their first product. ESPN didn't start out with the ESPY awards, various radio stations, multiple language products, a magazine and a TV station. Both started out by dominating one channel before launching additional channels.
There's no clear formula for how long it takes or how large an audience you need to create a network effect. But we know one thing: Marketers need to focus on one or two core channels and grow a loyal audience before adding more channels to the mix.
Stay away from overwhelming your audience with too much content and too many options: Failing marketers are blogging, podcasting, creating webinars, producing eBooks, newsletters, LinkedIn influencer programs, YouTube channels — you name it. Successful marketers focus on two channels, maximum. Until they get it right and expand to more channels.
DISTRIBUTION IS YOUR MINDFUL HEART
The amount of content being published is growing exponentially and content marketers are to blame. Well, at least partially. Fifteen years ago there were fewer than 10 million websites. Today we are approaching one billion and there are no signs this growth is slowing down. Add to that the decrease in consumer attention and it's almost impossible for marketers to cut through the noise in order to get their content noticed. Amazing content pieces are never seen every day on the Internet.
Just like a movie that needs a solid distribution plan, your content needs a sophisticated distribution strategy to succeed. Rather than trying to produce more content, marketers should invest in optimizing their distribution plans. Facebook and Twitter have sophisticated paid media products that can help marketers distribute their content to highly targeted audiences. With accelerating feedback cycles, marketers can double-down on past successes, discard unsuccessful content quickly and improve content's quality in response to actual demand.
By focusing on distribution using paid and earned channels, content marketers can increase their audience loyalty, audience growth and overall engagement. The solution to the content puzzle is not producing more content. The answer is creating worthwhile content and distributing it on one or two channels. Support this with a sophisticated distribution strategy, and your content has a fighting chance.
Uwe Hook is social media consultant to CO-OP Financial Services (
