Bill Gates's Big Lie: Dismantling the 'Content is King' Deception

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Content is a channel through which brands, marketers, businesses, and content creators communicate and educate their audience.

It is also one of the fastest channels to reach your ideal target audience without paying thousands in paid or social media ads.

Unique content will help you attract and educate your ideal customers or clients, build trust (through a content marketing funnel), and get them to take action.

Marketers use content to attract readers or viewers around a specific idea and hopefully get them to purchase your products or services.

Digital agencies and startups today leverage content to distribute information and get the right marketing message to the right audience.

You see, billions of people are searching for solutions and asking questions online. Think about the number of Google searches that go on each minute.

That’s a lot of possibilities for content thus why content is king.

But over the past decades, with the evolution and change in the digital and content marketing space is content king?

Some of the latest companies like Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and Google still leverage content to grow it’s user base massively.

These companies have billions of users!

Content is regarded as one of the easiest ways to get your marketing and sales messages out there. And unlike paid ads, you can create unique and helpful content for your customers.

It is simply an organic channel to get your brand message out there.

Startups like Buffer, UniclixApp, Hubspot, etc, have built a platform strongly using content. But in this short article, I want to explain to you why “Content” alone is not king and also share what is king.

In short, I am going to show you why creating the best content may generate little to no leads or sales.

Bill Gates’s Big Lie: Dismantling the ‘Content is King’ Deception

Years back, the phrase, “Content is King” was coined by Bill Gates (at least to the best of my knowledge — and research) in 1996. The phrase has since been widely popular amongst businesses, marketers, companies, and brands.

Fast forward, content is unarguably one of the best ways to generate revenue on the internet as predicted by Bill Gates decades ago.

During those times, you could simply publish content and it would rank on Google without much effort at all. That was why content alone was king.

Today, the case is different, and I’ll explain.

Here’s a practical example;

Go to Google right now and run this search;

“how to reduce weight”

There are over 10 million search results, results for just such term alone.

There are millions and millions of results showing.

Imagine creating content on how to reduce weight and hoping it will beat these results and rank on the first page.

That’s almost impossible because of the high level of competition for that keyword.

There weren’t so many websites to compete with. Content creators would easily create any content and easily rank.

Today, billions of websites are also creating content. So I leave you with this question;

“Is content king?”

I mean, if you just create content that does not rank and does not generate traffic, is it king?

Why would you put effort into creating content that will not generate sales, customer traffic, and leads to your business or startup?

The problem here is there is way too much competition for “mediocre content”.

If ‘content’ alone cannot generate sales or leads, it is not king.

If Content is Not king, What is?

Content marketing is king in 2024.

But how true is that statement?

Content marketing is the process of promoting content to a specific audience to achieve a goal or an objective (usually visitors and sales).

This could be through emails, ads, etc.

Content marketing is the art of promoting content to a specific audience or market.

The marketing and promotion aspect of this is the most important part.

Companies like Buffer and HubSpot built a content empire through effective promotion.

They created exceptional content and promoted it a lot.

If you publish any form of content and do not promote it, how can you generate leads or sales?

You may get a few signups, but is that enough to run your business or startup?

What is the aim of creating content if it does not generate sales?

The aim of creating good content is to market your business and achieve your brand goals. If your content does not rank or generate sales, then I would not say that content is king.

Great content with effective marketing and promotion is king!

Heard of the 80/20 rule?

Spend 20% of your time and effort creating good content and spend 80% promoting that content.

Content without an effective promotion strategy will not cut it.

You may have the best content, yet miss out on a lot of traffic, leads, sales, and customers.

Here’s the thing…

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Have a productive day,

Simon Taki Zaku,

Owner: [simonzaku.com/blog/]

Founder: SimonWrites Agency