Page 19 - The Content Code: Six essential strategies to ignite your content, your marketing, and your business - PDFDrive.com

originally fueled by crude “local” content, but the eventual winners are the
content creators with the deepest pockets. When television started, the airwaves
were filled with local programming (sort of like the bloggers of their day!). All
the cooking shows, game shows, and variety shows used local talent. Today,
corporations have taken over and there is virtually no “local” content left on TV.

Years ago, the most popular YouTube videos were locally produced home
movies. Today, the most-viewed videos are dominated by big brands and
slickly-produced films and music videos.

Even with Facebook, the great equalizer of the social media world, the
expense of promoting content goes up as advertising inventory goes down. Over
time, low-budget content producers will be edged out of the consumer mindshare
if they don’t find new ways forward.

Going back to my sporting goods example, if the company’s competitor had
more financial resources to pay for its content to get through Facebook, the
channel would eventually be closed off to my friends. This wasn’t even a
consideration a few years ago when the best content was sure to win.

2. Entry barriers become too high for some to compete. The deep pockets
trend appears in even the smallest market niches. The companies that can
overwhelm the market with content can effectively raise the entry hurdles for
competitors and maybe even block them out of key search results entirely.
Essentially, winning marketers create Content Shock for their competitors!

So the second implication of this trend is that barriers to successful content
marketing will become high, perhaps impossibly high, for some businesses.

3. Information density is an engine for innovation. Here’s the magic of the
entrepreneurial economy. When something isn’t working anymore, someone will
find something better to replace it! The information density hammer will forge
new content forms and niche platforms that will expose new opportunities for
early adopters and innovators.

The challenges at hand might seem difficult, but this is an era of infinite
opportunity. You need to be clear-eyed and rational, developing your strategies
based on what is, not what you wish things to be. How and when the Content
Shock comes will vary greatly by business, by industry, by a lot of factors. For
some, it might be years away; for others like the sporting goods company, it’s
happening now.

In the history of marketing, there have always been new frontiers enabled by
technological breakthroughs and the visionaries who act first. What’s the next
area of innovation to pioneer when the implications of Content Shock become