Seth Godin famously said, "If you're not content marketing, you're not marketing". That's a relatively bold statement to every marketer in the universe. Is he to be believed, or is he just messing with words to make marketers take notice? Never bet against the Sethster.

Locally, content marketing is moving to the forefront of strategy and execution. It's reaching crescendo-like proportions as the self-proclaimed King of Content, Joe Pulizzi, makes a rare Madison appearance. Hey, why not take ownership of the kingdom; after all, isn't possession nine tenths of someone's law? A little bit of full disclosure here - the Madison/Milwaukee Chapter of the American Advertising Federation, of which I'll be president next month, is flying Joe in from his home base in Cleveland for a speech on April 29th at 11:30 at The Madison Club. It's a ticket that is hugely in demand, but a few remain; you can find out more at www.aafmadison.org. And by the way, act fast to avoid disappointment.

Now, here's the truth about content marketing. Even though the company I work for, TMA+Peritus, was one of the very first content marketing firms in the state with a half dozen gifted writers producing targeted content for B2B, B2C and OEMs, the fact remains that content marketing has been around for 100 years or more. Is it a trend or is it mainstream? Actually it's both. It was a trend and now it's a fundamental, mainstream marketing philosophy. In fact, content marketing is the new purple, which was the old black, which was, of course, positioning. To take it one step further, if you're producing relevant, compelling and engaging content, you're positioning yourself as a thought leader, which is, of course, the old black to the new purple that is now enterprise-wide resource leadership.

Content marketing is equal parts creation and curation, and publishing and syndication. Gee willikers, that sounds like a newspaper or magazine to me. If I have my facts right, the first known newspaper was Acta Diurna published in Rome in 56 BC – that’s Before Content. But there are very few similarities between the originators and the new innovators.

I’m an online subscriber to a handful of newspapers, and I hope they stick around for a long, long time. But when newspapers refer to subscription services as Pay Walls, its got to make you wonder how long? That might just be the only double-negative that’s still a negative. Content marketers don’t push their content on to you. We use Voice-of-Customer research (VOC), to determine what content you want to receive, how frequently you want to receive it, what platforms you want it on, and what your habits are for sharing content. In the end, your customers and prospects actually look forward to your correspondence – imagine that – and that makes your company an enterprise-wide resource leader. I think the newspaper and magazine industries should do a little of the same.