Decentralized Brands & The Future of Content Marketing

Decentralized Brands &The Future of Content Marketing

TomCritchlow

We live in a world where National Geographic is

advertising on Snapchat, BWM is writing content on

Medium and Purina is buying native ads on

BuzzFeed...

Chapter 1

A retrospective of content marketing

source

““As some are lamenting the

death of the publishing industry, publishing for brands is undergoing a

revolution”

source: the time for content marketing is now

Chapter 2

Publishing & media

““The New York Times lost 80 million homepage visitors—

half the traffic to the nytimes.com page—in two

years.”

source: What the death of the homepage means for the future of news

““In the nine months the native ad program was available

during 2014, Upworthy said it generated more than $10 million in revenue for the

publisher.”

source: adweek

“BuzzFeed Distributed [...] a team of 20 staffers who would “make

original content solely for platforms like Tumblr, Imgur, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine and messaging

apps.” In other words, a team of people producing content that will

never even appear on buzzfeed.com.

source: a wave of distributed content is coming, will publishers sink or swim?

Chapter 3

The Decentralized Brand

source: recode

The realization of this concept is the fully

decentralized brand, with a fragmented audience spread across a myriad of channels,

apps, sites and platforms.

And far less emphasis on “clicks” and “links” than

there is today.

While this route is the future of content (& brands) online we’re lacking industry tools

for measurement and analysis across all these decentralized channels.

Chapter 4

So what to do?

Pursue decentralization the BuzzFeed way - where you

can gain returns and learnings.

The cost to produce content is so low that

iteration should be ingrained in everything.

The “chief content officer” or “editor in chief” is a crucial marketing role in a modern

organization.

Responsible for shaping content quality and tailoring

content to relevant audiences.

Empower the nodes and build content for them -

niche audiences are everywhere online.

Search insights are key to understanding and

researching demand and niche audience size.

Build shareable

objects

Think like an ad agency and use consistent

campaign concepts across a constellation of pieces of

content.

Content distribution is a key component to effective content

marketing - both paid for and organic.

And don’t forget PR.

Questions?

Thank you!

@[email protected]

tomcritchlow.com

TomCritchlow