Long Live the King!

You may not have noticed. But ever since the marketing folks in the marketing industry started believing content is king, they’ve been trying to convince us. Now you can hardly get away from the stuff.

At this point in the evolution of our gullibility, there are entire lists of content-writing services. And there are entire lists of content-writing services that even include the ones to avoid. We’re supposed to take it on faith, of course, that all this content about content is worth the time it takes to consume, to say nothing of coherent. But skepticism is the better part of naïveté.

Our favorite manifestation of this addiction to content is PLR. No. Not the rock station in New Haven, Connecticut. This PLR designates private label rights. And if you want to know how far gone we are, check this out, from one source of this tripe:

Quality website content extends beyond rewriting or “spinning” PLR articles for uniqueness. In order to shine, online content should be useful, well written, and relevant to readers. Professional sounding Web content and articles impress readers while original content impresses Google.

If you have a moment, we’d like you to go back and read that again. We’ll wait …

Welcome back. If you’re anything like us, you’re dumbfounded at the suggestion that we no longer require native, substantively meaningful, or original content that accurately and genuinely reflects the differentiating singularity of our brands. Uh uh. We don’t even need professional content. Nope. All we need now is professional sounding language — counterfeit content that impresses our readers. If you’re not dumfounded by that, you should be insulted. Actually, you should be both, plus outraged, especially at the notion that Google is the only reason to create original content.

We’re in deep trouble kids. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up at the mercy of gibberish-peddlers whose only aim is to get us to buy the gibberish they’re peddling — then pay them more to crank out even more gibberish. They don’t want us to think. They don’t want us to create. But they do want us to be as disdainful of our readers as they are.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

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