Has Content Marketing Become the Safety Blanket for Risk-Averse, PR Introverts?

Today in the Holmes Report, I wrote a guest post on how large companies and the media often have a lion and hyena relationship—natural born enemies  who fight over the spoils of newsworthy information. It’s a relationship that grows increasingly cynical as companies get bigger and bigger, when it could and should be much more symbiotic.

One very powerful thing that has actually made this adversarial relationship even worse is the advent of content marketing. We see more and more companies who have never been comfortable with traditional public relations embrace content marketing like a lifeline, thinking that controlled storytelling through contributed posts and the corporate blog is an end run around the perceived risks of media, analyst and influencer relations.

This means companies feel even less inclined to build strong relationships with beat reporters who have a job to do and therefore skirt any communicating through a more objective, third-party lens that reaches a much broader audience. This is a major, major miscalculation on the part of a corporate and marketing communications team. In part, because the opportunities for controlled content are much more limited, but also because  content marketing and public relations complement each other.

Earned media and original stories have always had more influence than contributed, marketing or advertising content, and content marketing gives corporate communications teams channels to amplify earned results. It is truly a 1 + 1 = 3 equation that yields outstanding benefits if done correctly.

Think of content marketing as diet and PR as exercise. When used properly in combination, you end up with a communications program that is healthier than the competition and will help a company look and feel more agile to external audiences.

InkHouse has a saying: if content is king, distribution is queen and she wears the pants. Content marketing and PR go hand-in-hand and the results can be powerful.