Content marketing

Great post by Hugh MacLeod today on gapingvoid:

Consultants showing off how smart they are? Under-employed or over-employed, that is content marketing. Exactly.

You write a blog. You build a dedicated following. You leave a discreet, non-pushy trail of breadcrumbs to what your business actually does for money. If X percent of your readers take the bait and become paying customers, hey, you win.

I love the ending, too:

That’s the good news. The bad news is, effective content marketing requires two things: world-class content and a world-class product. Harder than it looks. Life is unfair.

That's the hard part: Making something truly great.

And I think the key to that is your "art", as Seth Godin would call it.

Something that comes form inside your soul or the core of your being in a way. It doesn't have to be deep or mystical or weird. It just has to be you, what you're about, in a very real sense. You can't fake it.

That's one of my core themes, as you've probably noticed by now.