I nearly called this post Content 2.0, but decided we’re all a little bit jaded with the 2.0 label these days.

Nevertheless the concept stands: content is making a comeback.

‘But I thought it never went away’ you might say, and in many ways you’d be right. But in the past few years the spotlight has been on radical new technologies, such as social media and microblogging, and shiny new platforms, like smartphones and tablet computers. Content skulked off into the wings and bided its time.

But over the past 12 months the word is slipping out that content is back on the agenda. Smart marketers have switched on to the fact that quality, targeted content attracts visitors from search engines, gets shared on social networks and establishes authority. This approach to marketing even has its very own new buzzword: content marketing.

With this second coming of content there is a whole lot more that needs to be learned. In the past ten years the rules have changed, and an effective content strategy needs to factor in all the shiny new things mentioned above, namely optimising for search engines, social media and mobile delivery.

Not only that but the competitive landscape is harder than ever. As more and more businesses are becoming media companies, there’s more competition for the top spots in Google and more content jostling for the customer’s attention.

The growth in the quantity of content isn’t slowing down either, quite the reverse. PR companies are circumventing traditional media and publishing direct. A new wave of media companies like Demand Media and AOL’s Seed.com are applying ruthlessly efficient algorithms to create ideas for content and then streamlining the content production process using a giant pool of low-cost freelancers. Demand Media found that their algorithm-generated content produced  4.9 times more revenue than the ideas that professional editorial people came up with (guess what happened to those editorial people).

It’s clear that in the age of the second coming of content, a mixture of new and old skills is required if you want your business to thrive. Knowing your audience, and providing them with high quality content that meets their needs, is more important than ever. But creators also need to maximise the opportunities provided by search and social media, and take on board more innovations that are doubtless coming our way in the near future.

It’s a challenging but exciting time to be in the content business.

I just finished reading Bill Tancer’s book Click: What We Do Online and Why it Matters. If you’re interested in web trends, search engine marketing, or you’re just curious about how people use the internet, it’s well worth a read.

Bill Tancer is the General Manager of Global Research at Hitwise. I had an account with Hitwise during my time as Online Group Senior Editor at Future Publishing, and I have to say it’s a great online intelligence service. Here in the UK they track traffic details of 8 million internet users (in the US it’s 10 million). That’s a big sample base.

Bill’s book Click shares many insights into online behaviour that he has gleaned from this valuable data. Highlights for me include:

• The mystery of why teenage girls start searching for Prom dresses in January, way before the Prom season in May.
• His insights into the celebrity worship syndrome that has driven so much traffic to the likes of PerezHilton and TMZ (I saw this phenomenon first hand when I worked on developing the MusicToob site).
• The single statistic that ‘How to…’ queries account for 3% of all search queries in the US.
• His insights into social media and the so-called ‘super connectors’ that can push aspiring music artists over the tipping point.

You can buy Click for a good price at Amazon and no doubt many other excellent places.

Have you read Click? Share your views in the comments below.

Jason Falls writes brilliantly on marketing for social media, and his latest blog post, The marketing of unmarketing – a history and primer, summarises all the issues facing marketers today.

I’m hooked by this quote: ‘The brand with the best storytellers win.’ (Fredrick Marckini, CEO of iProspect).

Jason goes on to define the relationship between marketers and customers as one where ‘you are giving your customers the best stories to tell’.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Giles Colborne, managing director of user-centred design consultancy CX Partners, about the importance of storytelling in communications and management. During that conversation Giles recommended two books to me, and I pass on that recommendation, as they are excellent examples of how to use storytelling in the world of marketing and communications.

Recommended reads:

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning