Making an argument that content is in
opposition to conversation in the marketing industry, as discussed in
Novak (2010), is silly and narrow-minded. It's a tactic used by
politicians when they want you to ignore their stupidity and focus on
their opponents' dalliances. It takes the focus away from the
problem. Why would you denigrate the content that you need to get any
message across and set it in opposition against the marketing that
could make it succeed? It's not constructive, and it creates an
incomplete picture of the problem.
As soon as I read the Novak and
Greenberg articles (2009), my mind went immediately to several
projects I've worked on at WVU in which the partnership between
content and marketing was shaky. Take this incredible truer-than-life
story
on a speech pathology professor who grew up with a stutter, overcame
his disability, and went on to train future pathologists and counsel
hundreds of patients throughout West Virginia for free (Mazzella,
2012). I'll admit that I wrote the story for our news outlet,
WVUToday. But it's easy to make a nice story when you have such great
material.
When I looked at the resulting
conversation after the story's release on April 17, I felt it could
have gone to a wider audience and generated more chatter. It was one
of the five most popular stories on WVUToday before the onslaught of
graduation coverage in the following weeks. The Associated
Press wrote about the story after we sent it to media. That's not
bad for the cost of paying employees to write, make photographs and
post the story.
But consider that this isn't your
average kind of story about a dean being named to head an association
or a student who got really, really good grades and is saving a small
town's water supply in South America. That's what every college
writes about. They all think their perky run-of-the-mill stories with
exclamation marks are going to sell. But this is a story that we go
to great lengths to find and promote. It's one that people can relate
to, and it could do a lot in terms of forming awareness and good
will. I can't find an entry for the story on our main WVU Facebook
page. That would have been a great way to share the story among
alumni and others who are actively seeking out information on the
university.
A challenge in our marketing efforts is
that there are different people doing different tasks in marketing
each story. Some of the efforts are handled in my office. Others,
like Facebook and websites beyond WVUToday are updated by those in
other offices. Those decisions are made by other bosses who may not
have the same marketing priorities.
This is a key frustration that I'm sure
is not limited to marketing. Yes, I could ask more people to market
the story in an even nicer way next time. But there is a way to
capitalize on the dispersion of marketing tasks (especially social
media marketing) among various people in your organization. A
Ragan.com article suggests that social media marketing is everybody's
job. This goes beyond those whose task every day is to market with
social media. This is actually a really good thing for my office
because we have maybe one or two people whose sole task is posting to
social media.
A good way to look at this strategy is
to consider this blog post. I brought up a great story you'll
remember that you found unintentionally just by reading my post.
I've put the content versus
conversation in a more accurate light, defining the problem as not
one of content versus conversation but one of using your content
effectively. You need both. People will find out quickly if your
content is superficial, but that's another story.
References
Hanelly, A. (May 15, 2012). Why it's
time to get rid of your social media guy. Retrieved from:
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/Why_its_time_to_get_rid_of_your_social_media_guy_44882.aspx
Mazzella, D. (April 17, 2012). At WVU,
one man fights for words, hope. Retrieved from:
http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2012/04/17/at-wvu-one-man-fights-for-words-hope
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