Then and now

Monica Bussolati, whose firm offers services to help improve both content strategy and effectiveness in content marketing, recently posted a piece about association editorial processes. In it, she argues that they should look a lot like content marketing, with:

  • Active promotion of content assets
  • Publisher engagement, responding to comments and questions
  • A balance between content creation and social media activity
  • A willingness to crowdsource and embed, and
  • Social media tools used to broaden the mix of experts and resources

In her post, Bussolati includes a useful table offering a dozen ways in which the advent and growth of social media have changed content development. Her "then" and "now" comparisons try to make the shift clear using a set of real-world editorial examples.

Over the last several years, "publishing" and "content marketing" have blended, perhaps most visibly in the business-to-business and association publishing markets. Evident for a while, this trend poses challenges to the traditional model used to create, maintain and disseminate content.

The separation of "church" and "state" is an early example. Reframing a publisher's perspective from "product" to "service" is another. Both are hurdles to consider and overcome if we want to truly serve communities.

About Brian O'Leary

Founder and principal of Magellan Media Consulting, Brian O’Leary helps enterprises with media and publishing components capitalize on the power of content. A veteran of more than 30 years in the publishing industry and a prolific content producer himself, Brian leverages the breadth and depth of his experience to deliver innovative content solutions.

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