Content marketing gives brands an opportunity to serve the media functions once owned by publishers. It does that best when it puts editorial control in the hands of consumers.
An example comes from Hubspot, the inbound marketing platform that helps its clients host and offer targeted content. Hubspot recently revamped and relaunched its blog as Inbound Hub. After it went live, Kat Meyer sent me a link to coverage on Openview Labs, written by Jonathan Crowe.
Content Marketing Helps Address A Content Glut
Crowe interviewed Jay Acunzo, senior manager of content at Hubspot, who explained why the company felt a need to change its approach:
We’re really up against the known edge of what content can do to drive business right now — nobody knows what this stuff looks like at great scale. When I joined HubSpot to head up content, I saw how our scale — the volume, variety of post topics, different goals and formats, and a big network of contributors — was starting to break that standard single-column business blog. It’s totally new territory compared to a company struggling to publish weekly without going dark.
To address that content “glut,” Inbound Hub was reorganized “to create more topic-specific and reader-friendly subscriber options.” Moving away from a single-column presentation also meant that site navigation had to be rethought, so that it would balance simplicity and depth.
When it came to breaking down content to offer those topic-specific options, Acunzo described the reorganization as “a way to place more control back into the hands of our audience, since they can subscribe specifically to what they enjoy most.”
“If sales-related content is irrelevant to you, then you don’t need to subscribe to it. You as the consumer hold the control—as it always should be.”
Content Marketing Meets Traditional Publishing
Happily, this perspective explicitly considers choice, a core component of “Disaggregating supply“. It also fits nicely with an earlier post about the role of content strategists:
Content strategy is more than the activity formerly known as … something else. It is organized around customers, not formats or functions. The messaging is a component of corporate strategy.
This is an area where traditional publishers need to evolve, and quickly. Platforms like Hubspot increasingly provide marketers with an opportunity to serve the media functions once owned by periodical and even book publishers.
The lines between editorial and marketing content are already blurred, as marketers work to answer questions and solve problems for both current and prospective customers. If publishing incumbents can’t establish a customer-facing legitimacy, marketers may become their new and even primary distribution channel.
