Why Content Is King and Community Is Queen

This month’s marketing blog is part of a three-post segment on the theme of ‘The Ying-Yang of Content and Community’.  This month’s thoughts are on why content is king and community is queen. Next month, we will drill down on what it takes to create quality content, and the following month, we will extend on our September 2012 Rules-for-Customer-Engagement post and cover the strategies for engaging a community.

It’s that perennial story of Ying and Yang – Content is King as it provides the information and data that informs, educates, and supports and Community is Queen as it provides the people, context, and connections for that content. Community provides the context for the content – defining what relevant and important and worth knowing. Content provides the information and stimulus to facilitate conversation, activity and connection. In this age of personalization, where content and community both become increasingly more important, it’s even more important to think about both sides, while drilling down on either way.

Below are some thoughts for doing so.

Why Content Is King

1. Content provides information key for decision-making. Creating that content might involve research, data-collection, opinionating, and communicating.
2. Content stretches the thinking and flexibility of the communicators, which benefit all. Content creators are tasked with understanding what they are communicating, to whom they’re communicating, why it matters, and what the implications might be for creating that content.
3. Content provides food for thought which leads to new ideas and new thoughts for people with similar and different interests. Ideally, content creation also brings new thoughts and insights and information and that communication benefits the recipients in planned and unplanned ways.
4. Content creators cull from the massive volume of information available and frames it in a way that is relevant for the community. Fresh, relevant, thought-provoking content is essential for the health of a community.
5. Content connects people with similar interests. Content creators ideally connect with others adding similar value to the ecosystem, and serendipitous relationships, connections and happenings often occur.

Why Community Is Queen

6. Communities qualify the relevance of content.
7. Communities raise the bar for communicators, ensuring that the content remains fresh and relevant.
8. Communities connects communicators and helps them think about what they’re communicating and what the needs of the community are.
9. Communities review content and information so that collective decisions can be made.
10. Communities leverages content to further develop relationships and connections

In a perfect world, there’s an ebb and flow between the ying of content and the yang of community, the give-and-take between the left and the right, the constant review of what’s relevant and what that means for you and others. Content pushes the comfort zone of communicators and community alike. The converse is also true. Community pushes the comfort zone of the content creators. Either way, communications working in community and communities working with communicators encourages and supports the growth of both.

E-mail us with your thoughts, stories and best practices about creating content and engaging communities.

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