Content or Engagement?

It seems the world of Internet Marketing is getting involved in quite a discussion about whether “content” or “engagement” is the killer strategy.

Recognized experts don’t agree on the question. For example Gary Vaynerchuck cares much less about writing articles and SEO for his pages. He wants to “hang out” on sites where he meets and engages with people. Whereas Seth Godin produces a veritable torrent of short, pithy articles (along with great books of course) that challenge our thinking with his insight and ideas.

Recently John Jantsch wrote Content Creates Engagement in which he suggests “But, at the end of the day, if someone, looking for a solution, can’t find that you have in detailed, multi-format, education based content, then social media participation for business purposes can feel like a big fat high school mixer.”

I’m sure Gary, Seth and John wouldn’t find a single issue to argue about, but lots of people haven’t taken the trouble to understand all three include content and strategy in their brand.

Hopefully they won’t object to me taking their names in vain in order to illustrate my point, because in different ways they’ve each “engaged” me with the way they offer their “content”.

And my point is we mustn’t get put off engaging in social media by the people who don’t understand. There is no end to the number of people we’ll meet who just want to be our “friend” so they can punt their site with ads, or their book or their MLM scheme.

My friend @canvasman, whom I’ve never met christened these people “sellerazi” – which is a short way of saying they don’t give a crap about us, they just want to spread their poison.

We do need to accept the new dynamic – Search engines bring together people interested in understanding things with people who know about those things.

And we need to understand being connected with people who want to learn about things we know will depend upon the “content” we publish and our willingness to “engage” when they find us.

That’s my interpretation of John’s suggestion, and of course I agree with him.

And so by the way does Google. It’s entire business model depends on our willingness to contribute what we know, for free, so it can sell ad space to people who want to interlope in our conversation with those who want to learn from it.