A couple weeks ago, I introduced content marketing’s iron triangle, the inexorable force that makes content foundational to three interrelated disciplines: search, social and multichannel marketing. Today, I’d like to offer another trinity for your consideration.
The Three Cs of Content Marketing:
- Creation—is the collaborative, often distributed process of generating original ideas and creative output in the form of text, images, video, infographics and the like.
- Curation—is when marketers find, filter, organize and annotate third-party content to advance their storyline by adding value to someone else’s point of view.
- Cultivation—is the practice of inspiring your audience to contribute content back to your storytelling efforts, often in the form of comments, gamified or contest-driven contributions.
These are the key inputs to the content supply chain.
It sounds simple enough, but here’s the truth: content marketing is hard work. It asks brands to think and act like publishers: short-cycle, deadline-driven work; authentic, if not fully objective points of view; and, above all else, an abiding respect for your audience. Content marketing is about suspending the hard-wired urge to make everything about you.
That’s not easy for marketers who we’re trained to find the pitch moment in most every conversation.
At Gartner, we spend considerable time with clients discussing what it takes to become a successful content marketer. Now we’re taking the show on the road. If you are in Boston or New York, read on.
Gartner for Marketing Leaders is hosting local briefings on The Three Cs of Content Marketing. I’ll set the context with a short presentation and then moderate a panel discussion with your peers and other Gartner analysts. There will be plenty of time for questions, networking, cocktails and banter.
So, if you’re trying to crack the code on content marketing, you really should join us. Space is limited, but please do register using the appropriate form below. Hope to see you there!
- The Three Cs of Content Marketing; Tues., 9/17 in Boston: http://bit.ly/19AifA6
- The Three Cs of Content Marketing; Wed., 9/18 in NY: http://bit.ly/17NQvpx
- digital marketing