The future of content

Need for excellence remains

There’s a sentence I used to employ when talking to companies. Be a publisher. One as good as the Economist, Vogue or the Rabbit Breeding Gazette. Whatever floats your customer's boat.

Why? Because it helps turn visitors into customers or even into fans. Because it amplifies a company's values and expertise. And because it provides sales material and galvanises staff.

Such content should reflect the interests and values of your customers and potential customers. I do mean their interests – rather than what you want to interest them in. That comes later.

Turn and face the strange

This is a shift in content marketing. There is more to come.

I was Commercial Editorial Director at the Telegraph Media Group in its highly successful Create department, later renamed Spark.

We sold companies microsites on the Telegraph domain and made content for them.

There we would produce journalism and film for our clients and get them traffic.

So how do media owners in general achieve this?

• First, through organic search. They enjoy a brilliant domain authority, which means its sponsored articles rank highly in search.
• Second, by placement near editorial, sometimes including a slot on the home page.
• Third, by sheer excellence.

Lovely stuff

In the long run, though, placing content spend with a media owner is not enough. Clients get good numbers for their money, but those eyeballs are nowhere near the business end of their operations.

We founded Highbrook to address these concerns and help clients become fully fledged publishers.

We aim to produce journalism, film and design at least as good if not better than that found on editorial sites. Companies have bigger budgets, greater expertise and more data than 21st century newsrooms.

Now wash your hands

We're in a transitional phase.

In the end only one thing works: good stuff. That doesn't necessarily mean high end. It could be funny, informative or just be compelling narrative. Whatever suits. Whatever draws attention.

The temptation to use AI for content is overwhelming, but it won't help. The best it can write is an amalgam of what has already been written. Google's E-EAT formula still holds true. Experience, expertise, trustworthiness and authority win through.

That's why it's essential to find the right content agency. Not a fading digital agency, social media agency, web designer, general PR or creative shop. They won't have the skill set or the agility to respond to business needs. A full-service comntent agency could be the best choice.

Content marketing is evolving. Some companies will distinguish themselves as publishers of ideas, information and images. Nothing new in that. Michelin is a restaurant reviewer and a tyre-maker. Guinness does stout and a book of records.

Distribution systems constantly change, but one thing remains. Creativity. Future, present and past.