Girish Mhatre weighs in on B2B content marketing
Girish Mhatre was at one time the Grand Poobah at EE Times (editor in chief, that is) in the publication's print heyday. He's made some valuable comment on this blog this year regarding the trend toward content marketing and branded content. He dropped me a note today that serves as an excellent introduction to a new series we are developing here called "Why CEO's should be scared s(p)itless about their content. I offer Girish's observations without comment... for now. ;)
Girish Mhatre, journalist and wine enthusiast
Hi Lou, prompted by a conversation with you, I’ve conducted an informal survey of company content strategies. Here are some observations: I must say that I don’t get it. If this is the state of the art in content marketing by tech companies, then it’s not very effective -- with one exception.
Cadence: I am hugely unimpressed. Perhaps Fuller hasn’t got his arms around a strategy yet (Note: Girish is right. Met with Fuller this week and, he says he's still trying to get his arms around it.), but, as it stands now, it’s simple, straightforward, uninteresting reporting, one step above “backgrounders” that might accompany press releases. The best thing that could be said about this section is that it is inoffensive. And, there’s not a single reader comment on any of their articles. I kept wondering why this section even exists.
Altera: Ron Wilson’s bailiwick at Altera seems better defined. “We hope to bring you the latest thinking on the key challenges in the real world: defining system requirements, making architectural decisions, planning for implementation and—especially—verification, and estimating and measuring system performance.”
All to the good. Ron writes in-depth, dense, technical analyses, as is his wont, but there’s no indication that it’s being noticed. (Ron used to call it as he saw it, so I wonder how he likes hewing to the company line.) Again, there are no user comments. I suspect that in both these cases, “engagement’ remains elusive. (At least as measured by reader comments.)
Digikey’s been adding custom content from Publitek and Electronic Products. But it is buried so deep within the site that I doubt it’s doing any good.
Also looked at OracleVoice on Forbes (Alex Wolfe now writing there) and the IBM sponsored content on The Atlantic. The IBM thing is slightly more interesting because it is more expansive. The Oracle thing is simply weird; I found it superficial boosterism: “Isn’t-technology-wonderful-especially-if-you-are-an-Oracle-customer” kind of thing,
Question: where do these company editors reside within the corporate hierarchy? In marcom, or elsewhere? Also, how are their contributions (effectiveness) measured? Perhaps it’s too early to establish.
Now for the exception: Qualcomm Spark (http://spark.qualcomm.com/) is going in the right direction. This is a real, apparently well-funded effort to create something informative, engaging and valuable. It needs to be edgier, though.
It’s not as if content marketing is new. It’s been around since the dawn of time, spanning many generations of media technology. But it’s not a matter of hiring a couple of journalists. There has to be a content publishing strategy, no?
Yes, Girish, there needs to be a strategy. Working on that for next week. Stay tuned for Why CEOs should be scared s(p)itless about content.
While Girish is the Jimi Hendrix of tech publishing and one of the great minds extant, I might note that he neglected to take a look at what we are doing over at CMO.com for Adobe. Maybe we are not considered a true tech company, which is true, but I invite you both to check us out. As EIC I am trying to bring the same level of editorial quality to the site that we did at EET--that is, within the global marketing org of a multimillion dollar brand. Not perfect, to be sure, but I think we are going in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteTim Moran
Tim, Girish tried to send a response but there was glitch in the typepad comment tech. Here's what he sent me:
ReplyDelete""Tim, I offer you a most abject apology. Of course I know CMO.com and consider it a clever – pioneering – example of a “low touch” content strategy by a tech company and I hope it is proving beneficial to Adobe by all subjective and objective measures. I have no idea why it did not spring to mind immediately."
I'd like to throw in on that as well. When a branded publication does it's job right, you cannot tell the difference between it and a traditional, independent publication. That's what I've been saying all along.
And apparently Girish can't tell the difference either. So, well done, Tim.