Why Your Content Marketing Campaign Isn’t King

Before we crusade into the land of content marketing pundits, let’s retreat and point a critical lance at content’s regal definition. Then we can unearth a crown jewel of content marketing.

Sound the trumpets. Hark ye olde Content, thine King!

Now, hold your horses….Kingship means rulership, to make laws that must be followed. The question is if this moniker implies the powerful, cumulative effect of content to seduce readers and watchers to return, consume again, and so caught inside a perfect storm, to buy.

You can’t make someone buy.

So the definition of Kingship – absolute power – doesn’t capture what content is. To call content a Knight implies that it’s on a paid mission to force submission at swordpoint. We’re close, but content is not so vicious.

However, there is another patron at the digital court who embodies content’s task, and has a merry time doing it.

The Jester.

Content has more in common with Henry VIII’s court jester, Will Sommers, than King Henry himself. No one but Sommers could please the king to laugh while he was ill. No one else was given such freedom of expression. Excepting once when he inched too far, said the queen was ribald and suggested the princess was born from unwed parents, then Henry threatened to kill Sommers himself if he didn’t pipe down.

The Elements of Content

Your content unthroned is really a Jester – he’s at his best whilst dancing the Rufty Tufty:

Content is entertainment. It’s the Mona Lisa, Forbes, the State of the Union, The Sun Also Rises, Squirrel Memes, the Geico Gecko and anything else that will capture your attention – even if it’s just a tax blog.

Content can exist for itself, just as artworks have their own elemental worth regardless of dollar value or reputation.

Despite this, most content exists for more than itself. It helps businesses, marketing shops, and content crafters to create new visitors and opportunities, increased notoriety or a fistful of gold ducats.

So, the lionheart’s share of what we see online is there to entertain us just long enough to let us click, even if the content has intrinsic value. Of course, the more entertaining, engaging or famous, the more intrinsic value it has.

Mona Lisa greets 15,000 visitors a day and she scarcely smiles at any of them.

The Real King

That’s the value of lively and absorbing, dare I write exquisite content. It can inspire, inform and even reproach. Jester Will Sommers jibbed Henry VIII about the decadence of his court.
To pull that off Will’s content had to be good, which should instruct content craftspersons, i.e. digital Jokers, just who the King really is:

Their Viewers.

These are the Kings on whom we foist all content and to whom we petition for return again and again. Whether a ruler embarks with our content on a digital journey, especially content that prods the monarch to do something, depends on how high people will allow content standards to rise.

To that there is no limit. Regardless of form and intent, content has the potential to be art, with two results:

A finer internet.
Content with intrinsic value; nimble at seducing sovereign hearts.

We need both, because Kings alone rule on whether they read websites, blogs or watch videos.

And everyone knows it’s very rare for a king to submit.

Putting Your Joker To Work

“Now, though laughter may be regarded as a trivial matter, and an emotion frequently awakened by buffoons, actors or fools, it has a certain imperious force of its own which it is very hard to resist. . . . It frequently turns the scale in matters of great importance.”

-Quintilian, Circa 35-100

Forming content to serve Henry VIII demands much time, thought, imagination, dedication, wit and nerve. If your Joker can use these traits to harness emotion, laughter, or a bone of interest then the King with his coffers will be in your hand.

Abandon your 10 minute blog and create a little symphony worth sharing. Being a writer helps. Or an actor, videographer, painter, philosopher, mad scientist – anyone who has a refreshing story to tell, and who, preferably, hates marketing.

Because a Jester doesn’t convert a King by using content.

He converts him with his art.