If Content is King, You Must be the Court Jester
Written by Brian Wallace on May 13, 2008 – 2:30 pm -
(image credit: iPhotograph)
When it comes to hearing about success in social media, we’ve all heard the mantra everyone uses: “content is king.” And yes, there is truth in that statement. How can anything be expected to virally spread like wildfire with crappy content?
Imagine, if you will…the content court jester. How many times have you been surfing around through StumbleUpon and come across a patently obvious sponsored stumble? Yes, StumbleUpon says that these things will happen for 1 in 20 stumbles. Does that mean that a paid stumble has to be a content court jester? Of course not. It was just poor planning on the marketer that spent more time on the campaign than the actual content.
Face it. Nobody likes to be sold. Let people see what you have to offer and have them make their own decisions. The best marketing out there is so subtle or enjoyable, you don’t even realize (or mind) that you are being marketed to.
Now, this isn’t to say that content court jesters do not have their place in the world. It could just be that a company is doing a landing page test to see how well they are converting. Such companies should be warned: social media users are well armed with thumbs down, snarky comments, and adblock, so they had best do their business in the most attractive way possible.
Remember boys and girls..”content is king.” Just because the page was promoted through social media doesn’t mean it it doesn’t convert. Conversions happen. Conversations at the least will happen, and you’ll hear what people really think of you.
(Image credit: wwwigz)
And now, for something entirely different…
Back to our StumbleUpon point. The whole idea of this article came about after I saw what appeared to be a sponsored stumble from Nokia. Then, I looked at its Stumble record:
If you’ve been around StumbleUpon enough, you’ve probably seen this page by the likes of Nokia and others. Nokia isn’t stupid. So why such a sales page on StumbleUpon? Conversions. Sure, people thumbed it down. At the end of the day, if they are a high enough conversion rate, it may be well worth it for them. Even if conversion is poor, people are talking about them and they have some valuable analysis on their hands.
Social media marketing eventually comes down to ROI, like any other marketing.
Granted, a more subtle page may return a higher ROI, of course the only way to know would be to test both side by side.
The king may rise and fall from power. Perhaps the court jester makes sense: he pays his bills 
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