A shaggy dog marketing story:
The executives of a pet food company are meeting, and the Chief Marketing Officer stands up in his bespoke suit and announces a new product: Gourmet dog food in cut crystal containers. The trucks roll out to the stores to great fan fair; weeks later they roll back full, their cargo unsold and returned. So the CMO is fired, and new one is hired, fresh out of the Ivy League.
“Heart-healthy dog food,” he announces, standing in a suit so crisp you could cut a $2 steak with the creases. Trucks filled with the rebranded, repackaged product roll out to the stores to great fan fair; weeks later they roll back full, their cargo unsold and returned. So the CMO is fired, and new one is hired.
“I’ll be back in a few weeks,” he announces to much consternation. When he returns, he stands before the execs in muddy boots and jeans, and announces the marketing problem with the product:
“Dogs won’t eat it.”
It’s a sad truth that too many companies have no idea what purpose they serve. Media companies have mostly collapsed over the last decade because they thought they were in the content creation business. But the world is drowning in content. Some of it good. Much of it bad. And an egregious amount that was apparently created by crack-addled capuchin monkeys.
Here’s blogging’s dirty little secret: YOU DON’T NEED TO CREATE ANYTHING. As we established in Part One, you are An Expert At What You Do. There’s already infinite (OK not infinite, but close if you round up a bit…) content about what you do.
Wading through it and separating the good from the capuchin monkey shines is called curation. It’s a service your customers and prospects will reward with their time, attention, and trust for you as an expert.
Don’t believe it? Look at some of the most-heavily trafficked site on the Internet: Gizmodo, which curates tech news; Jalopnik and The Truth About Cars, which curate automotive stuff, and Instapundit, on libertarian topics.
Next: On Being a Curator