Much has been written about the power of social media recently. The power to connect people, to mobilize people, to augment brands, and to drive commerce. I think that power comes not only from the number of connections which exist, but also from the type of connections. In marketing, we aspire to a meaningful digital conversation with customer, prospects, and partners. That meaningful discourse comes from shared interests and desires. So it becomes even more important that we understand what those interests are the moment someone begins to engage with us. When this happens on your website it is relatively easy. When it happens as part of a stream of marketing messages and assets floating out there in social networks, it becomes much more difficult.

So, instead of a profiling engine which allows a prescriptive and guided sales process and journey, the customer has a much more random “dip” into that stream of messages. Messages which are created not only from your marketing department, but also from users, reviewers, bloggers, competitors, and other sources. An uncontrolled stream of information from which the prospective customer draws freely. To make this stream useful, as marketers we must drive content placement in many more places. Using affiliates, paid and earned media, and blog support and contributions, we must create, produce, and place many more assets than ever before so the prospect has a better chance of encountering a message when and how they like.

It is time for a revised content strategy. A content strategy for the new world of marketing. A content strategy that allows for rapid creation, multiple formats, reuse, syndication, fast delivery, and the seeding comments and reviews. Examine the content strategy for your most recent campaign. Now extrapolate that single campaign into a stream of content which is fed into the social media networks and connects in many places, on many devices, in many forms. That is the content strategy fo the new world of marketing.