"Intelligent content" (IC) may strike you as oxymoronic in the click-bait age — death to polysyllabic words and semantic exploration, I demand to know the 10 things that constitute a Gryffindor.
But in exploring the practice of IC, I discovered that I was poorly read myself. As with most aspects of content marketing, IC is vague enough to induce self-medication. Just read this definition:
"Intelligent content is content that’s structurally rich and semantically categorized and therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable." -Ann Rockley, founder of the Intelligent Content Conference
This sentence claims more adjectives than the current election cycle; "The Iliad" is a quicker read. In short, this definition is long and, despite its numerous descriptors, pretty unclear.
So in an attempt to better understand IC, I dug in as deep as I could for five minutes — the exact length of time it took me to eat my sandwich for lunch — to study the practice. Here are my takes, sans buzzwords, on IC's essence and what it means for marketers:
- What is 'intelligent content'? Intelligent content is not content. This is as fundamental to its practice as its title is to confusing you. Rather, intelligent content is a way to produce, archive, and optimize content for the web.
- How do I intelligentize my content strategy? Buckle up. IC is predicated on what is called "metadata." This means "data that describes data." Is that an aneurysm I'm feeling? Now, erase all of this from your brain. You're a human that goes on dates; I'll address you as such. Simplified, it's important to process content with coded tags (date, name, subject matter, etc.) that live in the framework of your website. They organize your content and communicate relevance to search engines. Let's move on before I lose any more lobes.
- Why should I employ IC? Depending on the scale of your content operation, IC may or may not be for you. According to content strategist Rahel Anne Bailie, “For corporations that have relatively simple content demands ... the investment in content to be structured beyond basic HTML may be overkill.” Every company can optimize its content, but only a few have a web presence and content bank complex enough to demand this sort of back-end formatting. Keep IC in your growth strategy, but don't put the cart before the horse ... or the horse before the ... moving on.
- How can I employ IC? At Influence & Co., we preserve all of our content in knowledge banks. Furthermore, we produce it using our own proprietary software and distribute and optimize it through HubSpot. Tech is at the heart of IC, but it's not the only aspect of the practice. The first step in its implementation is a step you could take tomorrow: Devise a content strategy and structure. They grow up so fast.
- What's the next level in IC? Honestly, I don't know. But Robert Rose provides a deeper overview in his article "Intelligent Content Demystified: A Practical, Easy-to-Understand Explanation."
IC, like much of our industry, is broad. But while I've certainly bemoaned this gross simplification of the practice, I've also learned a lot. As marketers, we should be consistently educating ourselves on how we can optimize our impact on the saturated content world. That takes more than five minutes, but it also pays for that sandwich.
Intelligent or otherwise, content can be overwhelming. Download your 4-step guide below to start tackling content marketing:
