We are in the era of the “silence, brand” meme. And rightfully so.

This shoddy-looking, brand-mocking meme gained traction as more brands launched cause marketing campaigns on social media around topics they’ve never spoken on. People are seeing this less-than-authentic content as a stunt to pander to the masses and make more money.

People on social media are creating content, like the “silence, brand” memes, to tell brands to stop talking about topics outside of their scope of knowledge or relevance.

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Earlier this year, Matt Cutts announced that guest blogging has, essentially, gone to the dogs. This condemnation was a big step toward filtering out low-quality marketing efforts in our industry, but for content marketers who are already focused on doing things the right way, this announcement should have little effect on their strategies.

That’s because real, credible content marketing revolves around creating high-quality content and building relationships with publishers who can benefit from that content — it’s not about being spammy, spinning articles, or doing anything and everything possible to get links. Still, sometimes even creating quality content simply isn’t enough. With the content explosion occurring online right now, what you produce can’t just be great, it has to be epic content — the right information, placed in the right publication to target the right audience at the right time.Continue Reading