What's Content Marketing and How Big Will it Be?

On Friday a rather long piece I wrote on content marketing went up over at Re/code. The point of the piece was to try to answer the three main questions we hear around the space: What is content marketing, why is it a big deal for brands, and how big could it really be? I did my best to answer all three questions and while I won't reproduce the whole thing here, I did want to give a little flavor for a few of the points I made that I think you'll find most interesting.

On the future of following brands:

The last note on the “why” question is around followers. For a while now, questions have been asked about why consumers follow brands, and what this means. Whereas at one time follower count was a meaningful metric for brands, it’s not any more. The major social platforms have a clear message to marketers: We have the scale and ad products to allow you to reach any consumer segment for a reasonable cost. The marketer’s job, then, returns to creating content that captures their attention and achieves the brand’s objectives, whatever those objectives may be.

On why mobile is so meaningful for the future of digital advertising and content:

What happens in mobile is that all the things that made up digital marketing over the last 15 years start to go away. That means no more flash, cookies, banners or Facebook sidebar ads. The mobile opportunity is about “native advertising,” which, in English, is just about the content and the ad being the same thing. To think about the market opportunity, then, you need to look at the market opportunity for the biggest social platforms (a.k.a. mobile media companies) in the world: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. (I’m leaving Google off for the sake of simplicity, but I think they belong in this group, as well.)

And, finally, my three big/almost-definitely-inarguable conclusions driving the growth of content marketing:

1. Massive amounts of consumer attention are moving to mobile social platforms.
2. Those platforms are made up of streams of content, and will offer brands increasingly impressive parameters for targeting unique groups of consumers.
3. For brands to be successful in reaching consumers, they will need to create engaging and on-brand content.
It seems relatively simple, then, that content — and therefore content marketing — sits at the center of the next phase of marketing technology, and offers a massive opportunity.

The whole thing is at Re/code.