Fast Company has this new article on Content Strategists. The basic gist is that companies who aren’t aware of the link economy or how content marketing works, then they are going to be hurting themselves, big time.
While working this morning I was talking to a chap at the local coffee shop who mentioned that his company, a very large manufacturing and textiles corporation, is hurting quite a lot. Their marketing hasn’t changed in ten years. They keep doing the same stuff over and over. They need a content strategist.
Companies that can’t be nimble, quick to push out fresh, interesting, and relevant content about themselves, their products, or their people are going to continue to bleed mindshare and market share to smaller companies that understand the new paradigm that is our world. These small companies act as content strategists.
I won’t even call it Web 2.0 or New Media anymore. It’s just the way that things are. The fact that companies need someone who can tell them how to publish content is such a neat opportunity for people like myself (a content strategist), and other web-savvy marketers content strategists.
The thing is, it’s not all that difficult to do – companies are just scared to do it. They’re scared they’ll say the wrong thing, scared they’ll make themselves look bad, scared they won’t have control. Well, operating from a place of fear never helped anyone.
All you need is someone who has the political pull within your organization to make real change happen. If that person gets on board with a content marketing strategy, you can change the face of your company fairly quickly, and fairly permanently. That person has to be empowered, however, and that person must understand the way the web works.
