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Content is Dead. Community is King Now
By Stoney DeGeyter (c) 2007

I can hardly bring myself to say the old cliche about content
being... well, you know. I think it's one of the original
cliche's in the SEO industry. And as redundant as it has
become, for whatever reason we keep hearing it over and over
again. And every now and then a new study pops up seemingly
proving, once again, that content is... uh, good.

But much like a TV producer suggesting "video is king" or a
radio advertiser demanding that "audio is king", so goes the
SEO demanding the same about content. Content has its role--and
an important one at that, but it's not the be-all, end-all of
online marketing. Not even close.

But the roots of the "content is" movement are important for
our industry. The mantra was first heard in the early days of
the search engine optimization industry when SEOs were doing
nothing more than throwing a bunch of keywords on a page and
hoping they ranked well. Little or no thought or consideration
was given to the readability of the web page. After all, it's
only rankings that matter, right? But those of us who learned to
game search engines slowly began to learn something that those
in the marketing industry have known for years. Words sell. Or
turn people off, depending on what's written and how it's
written.

So the movement to developing good content--real content--was an
important one for our industry. But to get there we had to have
the content mantra beat into our head over and over (and over).
We got it. We know.

The King is Losing His Grip on the Kingdom

But like any worthy cause, we've reached a point where the
mantra has been used and abused to the point where we use
whatever we can find to prove once again that content is...
y'know, that. Take a recent study by OPA and Nielsen/
NetRatings that shows that Internet users are spending
more time than ever on content based websites
(http://www.centerformediaresearch.com/cfmr_brief.cfm?fnl=070824).

Share of Time Spent Online

Commerce: 13.8%
Communications: 32.0%
Content: 49.6%
Search: 4.5%

That seems to confirm what many have been saying for years.
Content is... uh, great for web marketing. And I've seen a few
posts around the blogosphere and forums using this data to make
that connection. The problem is, it's not really there.

With the rise in popularity of blogs and social media sites
it's no wonder that more people spend their time reading online
than anything else. While time reading and gathering information
online has increased, time spent shopping has actually
decreased, down over 2% from a year before. But does that tell
us anything about marketing online? No, not really.

We know people like information and we know they like to
communicate. We also know people like to shop and online
shopping has continued to increase year over year. All this
study suggests is what we spend most of our time doing on the
web. Well, true enough, I don't spend most of my time
shopping.

Since when is it the goal of ecommerce sites to get people to
spend a long time on their site? Isn't it more important to
drive shoppers to the sale and get the conversion? Step 1: Get
traffic. Step 2: Keep visitors engaged. Step 3: Close the sale.
That's not necessarily a process that necessitates long periods
of time spent on a site.

In no way do I want to diminish the importance of content on
ecommerce websites. Having a database of information that helps
visitors make their decision, helpful tutorials, etc. can
improve your visitor's overall experience and keep them coming
back to your site. But the goal of all of that is to lead people
to the sale.

Community Killed Content and Stole the Throne

If I were to interpret this data I wouldn't necessarily come
away thinking content is... so very important. What I would
conclude, however is that we need to build websites that meet a
number of users needs. Adding more content to your ecommerce
site is not the magic bullet. What is, however, is creating a
great user experience and providing just the right amount of
information and customer engagement that shoppers need to get to
the conversion goal. That can be done through a number of
means.

Many online stores are already paving the way by opening the
door to ratings and reviews. Others are doing that by creating
blogs to disseminate important and relevant industry information
along with tips and tutorials. Still others do that by creating
an information database that can visitors frequent to gain
additional insights.

I might suggest that the best ecommerce websites are not those
that build content around their products but build a community
around the product interest. By creating a place where shoppers
can come and gain information, learn more about the products and
discuss or share information with others and then make purchases
as well, will do more for sales than simply creating a shopping
website.

By building a community you not only sell more products but you
build brand recognition and customer loyalty. And both of those
are worth far more than a single one-off sell. So while content
may not be dead (not by a long shot, really), there is a new
king in the online marketing industry. Long live community. Long
live the (new) king.
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Stoney deGeyter leads a spectacular team of seasoned marketing
experts at Pole Position Marketing
(http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/). Stoney started PPM in
1998 by finding the brightest minds in the industry and nurturing
within them an intense desire to become leaders in their
respective fields. With this team of professionals, he has built
a wildly successful website marketing company that succeeds
through both personal and professional integrity.
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