Content’s Reign Is Over. Community Is The New King.

In 1996, Bill Gates penned a famous essay titled “Content Is King.” In it, he wrote, “Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”

A few weeks ago, online marketing guru Neil Patel hosted a webinar titled, “Content Is Not King.” What’s changed over the last 27 years? The amount of content being produced. Neil explained that with 4.6 billion pieces of new content being produced daily, the competition to capture people’s attention has become more brutal than ever.

The idea that high quality content will naturally rise to the top presumes a degree of scarcity. In a world with three television networks, two local newspapers, and a handful of radio stations, the best content is likely to win. But what happens in a world with billions of posts, comments, episodes, streams, videos, and more?

Attention Is The Limiting Resource

My front yard has a lawn. Surely, there’s one blade of grass which is greener, fuller, and more lush than the others. But I have no idea which one it is, because I don’t have the brain space to evaluate each blade.

As Seth Godin noted in his 1999 book Permission Marketing, “Human beings have a finite amount of attention.” This leads to an arms race as creators produce more and more content, which only further divides the amount of attention that any of it receives.

Twenty-seven years ago, to reach a mass audience, you needed expensive equipment run by a team of specialists: a television studio, a printing press, or a radio tower. The content arms race was limited by the technological hurdles. Today, anybody with a smartphone can create content and distribute it to the world. We’re all content creators. In a land where everybody is king, nobody is king.

Community As The Content Filter

So what are content creators to do? How do you cut through?

The answer: Build community.

My girlfriend and I have a nightly ritual: We open Netflix and browse hundreds of shows that we’ve never heard of. After an hour of watching trailers and cross-referencing them with Rotten Tomatoes scores, we conclude that it’s too late to watch anything and go to bed.

Yet every time I am at a gathering, somebody inevitably asks, “What are you watching?” Every great show I’ve seen — from The Bear to Abbott Elementary to Severance — was a recommendation from somebody in my community. When there’s too much content for us to sift through by ourselves, we turn to our communities for help.

This doesn’t just happen with television shows. We know that “word of mouth” is one of the top ways that people discover new podcasts. We also saw this phenomenon during the pandemic, when there was so much contradictory information about COVID-19 that people inevitably turned to their communities — trusted family members, doctors, church leaders, or even cable news hosts — to sort through it all.

When there’s too much content, community becomes the filter. The content creators that will thrive in the coming decades are those that are able to build communities around their content.

What Is A Community?

Too often, content creators misuse the word “community.” They assume that just because they are creating content that is about the community, they are building community. This is not always the case.

What is a community? It’s a group of people who gather for a shared purpose. That can be a group of business owners who gather to exchange leads, sports fans who gather to cheer on their favorite team, or disciples who gather to worship.

Communities are not the same as audiences. Community members talk to one another; audience members do not. To attract an audience, you create content. To attract community members, you build a space for them to gather. This space can be physical (like an in-person conference), virtual (like a Facebook group), or both. While content can play a role in creating a space, you cannot build a space with content alone.

Fortunately, content creators are extremely well positioned to cultivate communities from their audiences -- especially if they are prepared to produce in-person or virtual events for their audiences.

Events As Spaces

To cultivate a community, you will need to change the way you think about events. Don’t think of your events as content to be consumed, but as spaces where people with a shared purpose can gather. Create an event for the local musicians, motorcycle riders, or craft beer drinkers in your audience to connect. In other words, don’t just put something on a stage; give attendees a reason to talk to each other.

Once you build a community, the monetization opportunities are obvious: Guitar Center, Harley-Davidson, and local breweries would love to reach these engaged community members.

There’s a glut of content out there, and your brand won’t get ahead by simply pumping out more. Content may have worn the crown in the past, but in the future, community will be king. Start building.

A version of this column was originally published in The Sands Report.