What is Content? It’s not Your Sales Copy
What is content? Everybody seems to know it.
Nobody even asks before claiming that “content is king“.
Yet content is not just body text or images you show on your site.
Content is not the packaging! It’s what’s inside the package!
Here it’s “escalating panic” from the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. Isn’t it?
So what exactly is content and how to fix an empty site?
Successful Content About Content Success
One day I published another successful list post!
It was about the 10 most common content strategy mistakes most businesses make.
In that post I promised to elaborate in a separate post on each item of the list.
Here we go. Let’s start with one: the definition of content.
What is content? Everybody seems to know it and take it for granted.
Do you know what content means without looking it up or scrolling down? I doubt it.
Most people merely seem to agree that it’s the monarch.
The History of the Content Monarchy
Large corporations and their CEOs have spread the “content is king” mantra!
They did for decades already, even before the Internet really started out:
- Sumner Redstone
- Bill Gates
- Rupert Murdoch
were not the first to popularize the “content is king” meme though.
According to Bill Gates who most often gets (wrongly) credited for coining the slogan content is even software like Windows.
Most people in business seem to prefer the broadest content definition there is:
anything that is “contained” by or on a website is its content.
Following this logic an online store showing only small product images and short copy and pasted descriptions along with pricing and shipping methods is a content rich site no doubt.
In short most decision makers assume that they already have content on their site:
Where? What is it? It’s their sales copy. I guess
the issue here is that a website can be quite abstract.
Just try to compare it to real life products like magazines, books or even groceries.
Can the description of a magazine, the cover text, maybe even a table of contents be the actual content of a magazine? No!
- articles
- photos
- reports
- interviews
- opinion pieces
are content – to some extent even the classifieds.
The same applies to a book. The actual novel is the content not the description of it on the back cover.
With groceries it’s even easier to visualize.
The content is not the description of what’s inside once you buy it. It’s not the list of ingredients written on the back.
The content or contents is the actual food you see once you buy the product and open it up.
All You Can Eat is the Content
Nobody would stuff even more descriptions of the content into the package and claim that it’s the content.
Would someone suggest to “Eat the paper inside.”? No. It’s obvious.
The content has value by itself and is not just a description of what’s inside.
On the Web most potential clients who ask me for SEO services do not seem to understand that they need content in the first place.
Or like in real life they want their customers to pay first to get the content.
On the Web they only display the descriptions of what you get once you pay.
The Web is different though. It has been built by and for scientists!
Those who exchanged their papers where they described scientific phenomena invented the Web.
The Scientific Publishing Model
Scientists wanted peer review. What did they show on their sites?
Did they just publish the table of contents of their papers? No. They published the whole paper.
Later when the salesmen appeared on the Internet they did not study the medium but just used it as packaging.
They published only the description of the content to be bought.
They still try but that’s like displaying books on TV sets.
You have to adapt to the medium, the medium doesn’t adapt to you.
Thus you have to understand that content is not packaging.
The Value of Content by Itself
Content is what you see once you open the package.
On the Web you have to display open packaging so that people can look at it and share it.
The website is the container that contains the content.
The list of ingredients is not the content. it’s just a description of it.
On the Web you don’t sell the content like in real life.
The content has to be free. You are selling products and services while the content is valuable by itself.
- Content helps to solve problems
- it makes people laugh
- it’s eye opening and intriguing.
Once the people love your content they will buy your real life products and services.
In rare cases regular visitors may love your content so much that they will be ready to pay for it.
It’s not necessarily the same people who read and spread the content but others who trust them.
For all other people your content only builds trust and helps people to appreciate you and your brand.
Please don’t consider your sales copy to be your content.
Publish content that has a value by itself to make people return for more.
Once they are used to it they are more likely to link to you!
Then people simply spread the word about your products or services as well.
How to Fix an Empty Site Then?
OK. So now you have found out that your site empty.
All the shiny products description Amazon and dozens of competitors also published are not content.
What can you do? “Just create great content for Google” is not a viable content strategy.
Maybe you should ask someone like me before trying to do it yourself again.
You may have no budget left and try to go the DIY route anyway.
Here is how to add helpful content to your site:
- Simply describe what you see on your product images. Other stores merely regurgitate the description from the manufacturer.
- Add some useful instructions on how to use your product and what you can do it! I don’t mean the features. I refer to actual use cases!
- Add details to product description and photos that provide meaningful context. Fashion online stores say something like “the model is 1.83m (6 feet), weighs 80kg and wears size M.
These are just three very basic ideas on how to create, expand and optimize content for your business.
Yet even these best practices get neglected my most sites in 2023.
It’s really not that hard to outshine your competition with content SEO.
Contact me in case you need help with it for Google and beyond!
Love it! I find that clients frequently think that they have ‘content’, when all they actually have is a descriptive shell. Nice definition!
I couldn’t agree more with your definition of content. I come across a lot of websites and webpages that are chock full of words and more words, but that have very little real content.
By the way, I love the Brooklyn Superhero Supply website, and am almost tempted to purchase a cape from them… almost. :)
How did you first discover that site?
Brilliant article here. It almost like some websites have incredible amounts of useless information, that lacks real content. And this is where the internet is wasted.
As they say, content is king.
Jono: Thank you for the kind feedback!
charlie: Glad to hear that you can relate. The Brooklyn Superhero Supply is indeed hilarious. I don’t remember for sure but I think I’ve found them via Tumblr.
Nick: Thanks for the appreciation and yeah content is king, but not everybody who wears a crown is one ;-)