Sphinn - Content is Dead. Community is King Now.

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Sphinn It!

Went Hot: September 19, 2007 - 12:47 am
Posted By: adam 656 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchengineguide.com)
Category: SEO

An interesting take on content verses community. Is content dead?

18 Comments

Who Desphunn This (0)

Comments

from MrRex 656 days ago #

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well, while I'd like to see the old king dethroned just so that phrase would die, I don't agree. How do you build a community? By offering content they like. I think that's why we'll see more commerce sites adding user recommendations and ratings - it allows users to engage and enhance the content. Every review is a bit of content, so in a lot of ways communities are merely changing how we view and what we consider content to be.

from adam 656 days ago #

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I guess what he is trying to say is 'content' is dead but user generated content 'community' is alive?

from MattC 656 days ago #

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@adam, So what your saying is, content is still king. lol

from adam 656 days ago #

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Looks like it ;)

from adam 655 days ago #

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Solid user generated content?

from Halfdeck 655 days ago #

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First, the title is misleading. Content is clearly not dead.

Second, which is more important on a big mac? The cheese or the burger? Well it ain't a big mac without either so why waste time comparing the two?

from g1smd 655 days ago #

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When you've read the 50th "10 best SEO tips" post and the 500th "Sign up/don't sign up to Blogrush" post... what next?

from thoughtbeans 655 days ago #

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Community can be attracted only if the content is good.

from aimClear 655 days ago #

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Community is all ABOUT content. Any suggestion of that community and content are seperate is delicious (albeit successful) hyperbole. :)

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2007/04/27/content-marketing-the-new-seo/

from St0n3y 655 days ago #

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I was primarily referring to commerce sites and those selling something on the web. But yes, the title was misleading because I do say within that content isn't dead. Content is used to build a community but so are many other things as well. Content is just one piece of that. So while content is useful, it's not the end goal... the end goal IS community.

from hugoguzman 655 days ago #

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How ironic. I just blogged about why content is still king:

http://digitalgrit.typepad.com/getting_granular_the_digi/2007/09/understanding-w.html

The bottom line is that whether the content is user-generated or traditional (articles, images, etc...) if it is of high quality and if there is plenty of it (i.e. updated on a regular basis) it will pay huge SEO dividends in the long run.

from radrew 655 days ago #

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Communities still gather around content like mentioned above. Content will always be what draws a community in the first place.

from unglued 655 days ago #

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>>I was primarily referring to commerce sites and those selling something on the web.

IMHO, the only way to build that community of prospective buyers is with content as an attraction strategy. Content is the new advertising, it just has to be damn good going forward after several years of list-based linkbait.

It is possible to grow a community by making smart deals with existing publishers. but even then, how do you keep them and convert them? I'd still be using content to pre-sell and solid copy to close.

brian @ copyblogger

from ryanol 655 days ago #

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I'll take you one further.... not only is content still king, its the new currency in the information economy.

from betweenstations 655 days ago #

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There remain numerous markets where community is an issue. I can think of several commercial markets where community is a serious issue, because one element of community is personal identification.

I can't think of a lot of 'satisfied clients' who want to be a community of supporters for, say, the criminal defense lawyer who got them off. At least, not by name.

from drmadcow 655 days ago #

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Content will always be king, because communities are for the intelligent. Anyone here with enough experience dealing with people will tell you the average computer user is borderline handicapped. Just look at some of the strange long tail SERPs that land on your website and you'll see why :)

from Sem-Advance 654 days ago #

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Meanwhile over at reality central....'Content' has my partners, clients, and myself, ranking at the top of Google for months & years.

Community works for somethings - but for a vast majority it does not.

from dal 650 days ago #

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I have to say "no" on this one. Communities need something to rally around to give it the "staying power" that a website needs to keep the crowd coming back. In my experience, great content builds the community. Take SEOMoz for example. Rand has put many hours into writing great articles covering many topics. So well that now he not only has a premium membership (yes I am a member BTW) but attracted investment capital because they liked what he was doing and what they had built up. Content will always be king but there willl be more in the "King's Court".