The Real Story

The website WhatIs has a great definition: Content marketing is the publication of material designed to promote a brand, usually through a more oblique and subtle approach than that of traditional push advertising.About IC card in China used for paying transportation fares and for shopping. The essence of good content marketing is that it offers something the viewer wants, such as information or entertainment. Content marketing can take a lot of different forms, including YouTube videos, blog posts and articles. It shouldnt really seem like marketing in some cases, in fact, it should only be identifiable as marketing because the advertiser is identified as the content provider. 

Advertisers and public relations pros have been peddling the soft sell for years. The Honus Wagner baseball card, famous for being the most valuable sports card in history with values approaching $3 million today, was a giveaway from the American Tobacco Company back in 1910. 

Social marketing expert Andreas Ramos, author of the new tome, The Big Book of Content Marketing, votes for a fresh concept. 

Its new, Ramos says. Two years ago, content marketing didnt exist. Some claim that it has been around since the 1920s. Yes, companies did indeed hand out comic books and magazines, etc., but the intention was to entertain, be a public service, etc. The fact that produced the move to content marketing is the collapse of advertising. Traditional media relied on a near-monopoly control of a market by controlling the expensive reproduction process and chain of distribution. But digitization and the web have undermined that. Anyone can create a document or video now and share it with (in theory) over a billion people at zero cost. Advertisement placement in traditional media is expensive. By using digital media, you cut your reproduction and distribution costs to zero. Ive sold over 2,000 copies of my book at zero distribution cost. Literally zero. Not even a single postage stamp. 

Ramos included a short chapter about public relations in his book written by me (for which I was not paid). A quick example of content marketing using public relations would be mailing, posting or emailing a story about yourself or your brand that appeared in Forbes or the New York Times to broaden the reach of the article. Ramos claims the inter-connectedness of the web turbocharges the new content marketing. 

People also discovered with search engines and social networks that they can ask each other. They trust each other more than they trust vendors. People shifted their attention away from radio, TV, and magazines and the authorities (journalists, editors, etc.) They now prefer the anarchy of home-made video on Youtube and the anything-goes situation at blogs, Facebook FB +1.4% and Twitter. This conjunction of forces digitization, social, search engines never existed before. 

Eric Schwartzman, CEO of social media training provider Comply Socially, says content marketing changes the fundamental nature of public relations. Conventional PR is an interruption tactic, Schwartzman says. PR people are experts at breaking and making news. Content marketers, on the other hand, fulfill existing demand for information by staking out specific keyword queries, and creating content thats most likely to get found when people search those terms. If you compare the skills it takes to write and pitch a press release versus a search engine optimized product demo, theyre completely different skill sets. Just because you can write up and present impartial information to journalists to try and get them to write a story, doesnt mean you have the ability to actually write the story yourself. PR and content marketing are totally different. PR is an outbound, interruption tactic. Content marketing is an inbound tactic designed to get you found by people with a much higher purchase intent than those perusing a Twitter feed. 

The goals of Content Marketing are to: Build relationships with existing clients, attract new customers, demonstrate benefits, tell interesting stories about your brand and to appear in search engines and increase web traffic. 

Of course, content marketing, like a good Hollywood comedy, doesnt work without good writing. The secret? Tell a good story. Fellow Forbes Contributor Brandon Gutman referenced five companies that create unique content from how to guides to music videos to apps. They publish this unique content on their websites, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms to engage the consumer. Some brands, like American Express AXP +0.96%, live stream concerts to their clientele. 

A crude barricade across the wide avenue leading to Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque forces cars, buses, and lorries to turn sharply and either park or take a detour round this vast encampment where tens of thousands of supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi have assembled over the past 10 days. 

In front of the barricade are several young men wearing hard hats and carrying staves to fend off any attacks. The guard at the opening where men are filing through directs me to the right where a head scarfed woman looks into my bag and another pats me down in a search for weapons. 

She peers at my Cypriot press card, unable to read English or Greek. From where are you? Cyprus. Welcome, welcome, she smiles. 

As in Tahrir Square, the cradle of the 2011 uprising appropriated by the secular camp, vendors have popped up everywhere, offering coffee and tea, chilled water, food, flags and second-hand clothes. The area is swept. Garbage is collected in blue plastic bags. 

In tents and canvas shelters people lounge on mattresses and mats, watch passersby stroll toward the gleaming white mosque where on a stage,The smart card has a memory chip embedded in it that, draped in green, the favourite colour of the prophet Muhammad, a preacher is exhorting the crowd. Shoeless men are assembled in tidy lines, prayer carpets before them,You'll find a number of top quality China smart card suppliers. in preparation for the noon prayer. 

His voice rises and falls, sobs and shouts, detailing the Muslim Brotherhoods version of clashes that killed 51 people at the nearby presidential guard headquarters at 4am. 

Our innocent women and children were killed as they prayed, he proclaims. A boy in a green T- shirt covers his face with his hands and weeps as a girl in a white headscarf, bright blue shirt and tight jeans, lifts her pink mobile and snaps photographs. 

The speakers voice sharpens as he calls for martyrdom, jihad an intifada an uprising, to oust the army blamed for the killings, the godless opponents of Morsi, whose bearded portrait hangs from tent polls, a slight smile on his lips. There are few smiles among the men as they wait for the formal noon communal service to begin, their hands cupped in the attitude prayer, heads slightly bowed. My driver, Said, from Aswan and I walk between the lines of the devout without remark or incident. The faithful bow and bend to their knees, touch foreheads to their carpets. Allahu Akhbar! God is Great! Here there is no separation between mosque and state. 

A 20-minute drive but a world away through nearly empty streets, Tamarod (Rebel), the youth movement that launched the latest round of anti-Morsi demonstrations, is holding a press conference at a luxury Nile-side hotel. The air is chilled, the carpets are deep, filtered coffee is on offer. Half a dozen young men sit behind a bank of microphones on a long table, draped with a colourful cloth.