Portfolio · Written for this search · content-marketing
Content Marketing
Measurement desk
Content marketing is the practice of publishing useful material so that the right readers come to a firm on their own terms. The Measurement desk treats it as a loop, not a campaign.
- Reader question
- Published piece
- Distribution
- Sampled response
- Editorial revision
What the practice is
Content marketing means producing articles, reports, talks or tools that a defined audience would want regardless of any sales aim. The material carries the firm's name. It does not make a pitch.
The Measurement desk separates it from advertising on one point. Advertising buys attention for a message. Content earns attention by answering a question. That difference sets how the work should be judged.
Arranged as a loop
The diagram shows five steps. A reader question starts the work. A piece is published and distributed. Responses are sampled, and the editor revises. The loop then returns to the question. The desk regards the last step as the one most often skipped.
The comparison with the portfolio is one of method only. Readership data is a sample of an audience, much as the desk describes in Measurement and sampling. A small sample can mislead. Which readers were counted matters as much as how many.
Limits and error
Content metrics are noisy. Page views, shares and replies each carry error, and the sources of that error differ. The desk's note on Noise and error is about a different field. The discipline still carries over: name the error sources before drawing conclusions.
Practice usually combines human judgement with automated tooling. Editors decide what is worth saying. Software handles scheduling, tagging and counting. That split resembles the one in Hybrid execution, though the analogy is loose. The wider catalogue is at the portfolio.
Finding from this desk
The desk's reading is that content marketing works as a feedback system. A piece is only as good as what the firm learns from how readers respond to it. We recorded no results for this note. It sets out a way of arranging the concept.