Marketing a business using content isn't a new concept, however, it has evolved in recent years to mean far more than creating a company brochure filled with overtly promotional messages and images. Today, content marketing focuses on creating content that is meaningful and useful to consumers with promotion taking a backseat to adding value, particularly adding value to the online conversation happening across the social Web.
Modern consumers try to avoid being interrupted by ads and marketing messages. Although companies used to use tactics such as shock advertising and sexual innuendos, now consumers can simply click away from an online ad or skip commercials on their DVRs. Even the most attention-getting ads go unnoticed by fast-forwarding consumers.
Yet consumers are also hyper-connected. They have access to enormous amounts of information, such as instantaneous access to real-time news, from their homes, offices, and mobile devices. Simply interrupting consumers and delivering marketing messages doesn't work anymore. Companies have to quickly demonstrate the added value they can deliver, especially if they're interrupting consumers in order to deliver that value.
With content marketing, companies engage consumers rather than interrupt them. Rather than take control of consumers' online experiences, businesses need to enhance those experiences, and they can do it with content that adds value and engages consumers.