There’s an old thought in the business world – with quantity, quality goes down! And this seems to be holding true for digital marketing as well. Responding to the boom in social media and the internet world, marketers adopt content marketing to reach out to the online consumers. But the questions to ask are whether marketers are focusing on the quality aspects, is their content in lines with what consumers want, or putting it straight – are they following some ethical standards.
We came across the guidelines from Contently who recently published the code of ethics in content marketing. Being an online platform where content creators and publishers connect we feel Contently has the expertise to put across some solid ethical standards on the table. So what does it say?
With the internet world being highly commercialized, content marketers are to adhere to very strict reporting standards and follow core journalism values of integrity, honesty, responsibility and accountability. This includes acknowledging facts, exposing truth, crediting the sources, eradicating plagiarism and fulfilling promises!
The code also asserts that content should be clear and readers should understand the same fully. There should not be any vague content. There is no point in actually communicating a message that the user does not understand. Here, once again I’d like to mention what I wrote about in the first few lines of the paragraph. With pressure of volumes, the quality of the communication takes a beating. Marketers need to keep these pointers in mind!
Lastly, the code mentions conflict of interest in a way that content marketers are to disclose these conflicts whenever possible. In case of an appearance of a conflict, it needs to be brought out!
Now these are some standards that will bring about increase in quality in content writing and marketing. We hope marketers can appreciate and adopt these standards which will improve consumer understanding and marketing relevance.
