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Content Is King – Original Bill Gates Essay & how it applies today

By jorge gasca.

Content Is King – Original Bill Gates Essay & how it applies today

If you haven’t heard of the quote ‘ Content is King ‘ is probably because you have not been paying attention or you are new to the Internet Business Industry. Either way you need to understand it because every business must create content to their customers and this article will show you why ‘Content is King’.

I did some research about the reason behind this say and I decided to post it here because even though deep inside we all know it is true that Content is King, I believe that not everyone actually understands the reason behind it.

The history goes back to 1996 when Bill Gates wrote an essay called ‘Content is King’. Interestingly, over the years it seems that the message has changed . What Bill Gates meant at the time when he wrote this essay back in 1996 was not related to writing a blog post or making a video but it related to the business model of selling information and advertising at a low cost using the Internet as a distribution channel reaching vast masses.

Bill Gates point in my opinion is still valid and it’ll be valid for very long time. If you think about it we are in the second industrial revolution, the difference is that this revolution is about information.

We are in the Information Age (also known as the Computer age or the Digital Age) just as the Industrial Revolution led us into the Industrial Age the Internet lead us into the Information age. Just to give you an idea of how long we have to go, as of 2012 the Internet has only penetrated 34.3% of total world population so there’s still sometime to go.

I’ve decided to search for the original essay from Bill Gates (which was very challenging to find) because I want you to read it before we continue.

Content is King by Bill Gates (1/3/1996) Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment. When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important. But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate. One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience. The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet. For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture. I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests. Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions. But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium. If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines. A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet. For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative. Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals. Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries. For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time. So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue. In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so. But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different. Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly. As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off. Some content companies are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content. It’s tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription, the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value proposition to advertisers. A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate. But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis. This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences. Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content. This essay is copyright © 2001 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Now that you’ve read the original document, I want to tell you that even though the article is still valid, these days this quote relates more to information made available by a website or an electronic medium.

So, you might be wondering if Bill Gates was right but the concept refers to information available, how can you explain this term?

Well, content is King in one way or another. Content is King in terms of business model in which you can create an information based product and a business around it. Also, Content is King because the information that you make available through your website will increase the changes of you ranking on a search engine (e.g. Google).

I’ve explained how search engines (SEO) works on a separate post which you can read here . The role of search engines is to bring people and information closer. This means that if you have a website you need information to close the gap between you and your customers and help them understand what you do while being discoverable through search engines and other mediums.

In conclusion, Content is King because today you can transform you knowledge, talents and skills into an information product that you can sell and create a business around it (Bill Gates’ view) and you need written content to be discoverable and understood by your customer.

What are you waiting for to start creating content?

Jorge Gasca

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Content is King by Bill Gates

I’ve had a frustrating time trying to find the original ‘Content is King’ article written by Bill Gates back in 1996. There’s a few sites that have a copy of the essay, but nothing on the Microsoft site (it has been removed from the Bill Gates Published Writing page). Wayback Machine seems to be the only other option (thanks to Andrew Heenan for the link).

If you can find a Microsoft link could you please let me know. For now, I am adding the essay in it’s entirety here (as I will be referring to it in a future post).

Content Is King – Bill Gates (1/3/1996) Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment. When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important. But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate. One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience. The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet. For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture. I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests. Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions. But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium. If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines. A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet. For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative. Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals. Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries. For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time. So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue. In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so. But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different. Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly. As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off. Some content companies are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content. It’s tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription, the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value proposition to advertisers. A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate. But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis. This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences. Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.

UPDATE: As of 21 May 2022 I have turned off comments on this post (it was just getting hundreds of spam comments each month)

691 comments

Content is king but what if you are not able to come up with new content so frequently that you can compete with the big guys in your niche and are in danger of being neglected by search engines? Just find guest bloggers to add valuable content within your niche on your blog. You can connect with guest bloggers through [snip]

Nice comment. Did you actually read this post? :-)

No problem with the new content. It is important also to update old, since readers often fall for the old articles and may not pay attention to the date of their creation, then they can take the wrong course of action.

This post was created on May 21, 2010 and found out by me on Aug 7th, 2017 in Singapore. This shows that content created many years ago are able reach any corner in this world and even years later the content still exist.

Never doubt the capability and powerful of Online business, especially to those seniors like 50 years and above. The future of internet marketing is going to be much larger. Let’s embrace it and use it to our advantage. Leverage on it and create your future.

That’s something we have been focusing on our blog aswell. Content is good to entice your visitors & keep your brand in mind so the next time they think of your service, they will most likely remember you

Content is King by Bill Gates http://bit.ly/9h6sm2

Content is King by Bill Gates http://bit.ly/8X00Mc #sm

Was talking to @irina_guseva about 1996 "Content is King" article by Bill Gates in SF & here it is – @craigbailey blog: http://bit.ly/cgKHFD

classic RT @IanTruscott: Was talking to @irina_guseva abt Content is King by Bill Gates & here it is by @craigbailey http://bit.ly/cgKHFD

Thanks for the article! Even though it was written a long time ago it holds great truths.

Bill Gates' View ….Back in 96, you might also come across a commonly used phrase http://bit.ly/dsvCx7

[…] Bailey, C. (2010) â€œContent is king by Bill Gatesâ€, Craig Bailey Blog, (March 1), at: http://www.craigbailey.net/content-is-king-by-bill-gates/ . […]

Thanks. You’re right. This is not easy to find, so thanks again for sharing.

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Content is king – the interpretation of Bill Gates’ essay

“content is where i expect much of the real money will be made on the internet, just as it was in broadcasting.” – bill gates, content is king.

Tweet this quote

Why is content king?

The essay was one of the first publications with such an impact on the industry. But what are the main takeaways?

Digital content is easily accessible

Reading the full version of Bill Gates’ “Content Is King” essay over 20 years later is a peculiar experience. Most of his predictions were a best practice at some point since their publication, and many are to this day.

One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. The Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience. Bill Gates, “Content is King”

Gates saw content as much more than just raw copy, insisting that even software falls into the category.

Content is king for SEO

SEO from 15, 10, or even just 5 years ago is dead. It’s (almost) all about user experience now . Search engines can look at a variety of metrics related to your page to determine whether users love it or hate it. If you give visitors a free tool that solves their problems, they will keep coming back and they will reward it – not only with leads and sales but also with higher visibility.

Everyone can (and should) take part in the content craze

The essay recognises the Internet as a fantastic medium for entertainment and information, putting emphasis on the ease of sharing content on the Web.

But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate. Bill Gates, “Content is King”

Low distribution costs and a larger audience than traditional media make digital content a great medium for companies of all sizes.

Unfortunately, not everyone got the memo. In 2015, 60% of small businesses didn’t have a website . That was nearly two decades after Gates’ essay. In 2019, the numbers weren’t much better, with several polls pointing at 28-40% of small businesses without a website, varying because of different size criteria and data samples.

As harsh as it sounds, a small company without a business website in 2019 was 23 years behind the market leaders .

And if you’re worried about outranking “the big boys”, don’t. With a precise strategy, you can get a slice of the pie, even as a freelancer or one-person business. How to pick your SEO battles with the giants is a topic for a different post (or even a book), but don’t be discouraged. It can be done, and we see it every single day.

Do you have content strategy tips?

First of all, do you participate in the content craze? And if the answer is “yes”, what tips do you have for others? Let me know in the comments .

Digital content differs from print

Many people think that whatever the medium, we will appreciate the same excellent piece of content. Sadly, reading a news website isn’t the same as publishing a book in a digital format .

The latter is still a book. The medium changes, but the purpose doesn’t.

On business, entertainment, and information websites, people scan content instead of truly “reading” it .

But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium. Bill Gates, “Content is King”

It’s not the same as grabbing a newspaper and reading articles thoroughly during your daily commute. Many people will use their smartphones instead and what they’ll do is likely a mix of:

reading the headlines and excerpts on a news website
scanning individual articles
using social media posts to catch up on the news

These scenarios are entirely different from what motivates people to reach for a newspaper, and that affects how you create digital content.

Content marketing is a long-term process

Even though Gates acknowledged it in 1996 already, most people struggle to understand it at first. But we can see where their confusion is coming from.

Most guides and industry resources put a high weight on immediate content distribution. Once you publish an article, it’s crucial to distribute it right away. You have to spend much more time on distribution than content creation . It’s a commitment, and it doesn’t stop when you hit “publish”.

People misunderstand this as a short-term success when in reality, it’s just laying the groundwork for long-term success.

For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time. Bill Gates, “Content is King”

If you visit news sites these days, you’ll notice that subscriptions are working . Paywalls are becoming increasingly popular. They’re still frowned upon because we’re all used to content being “free”, but I believe everyone will ease into this model. And I’d also like to think that paying for online content will be an improvement for everyone .

But only if it’s executed correctly. In the end, eliminating annoying popups and ads with a small monthly fee should benefit everyone.

For me as a reader, this is a quality of life improvement. As a content creator, a quality of life improvement for you as a reader gives us a boost in engagement and user experience metrics. The content can then rank higher and reach a wider audience, to improve their lives too.

It all falls into place, doesn’t it?

Nearly three decades on, most businesses still don’t believe Gates

According to research by the Content Marketing Institute (2021) , 75% of B2C content marketers say their organisations outsource content creation. About half of them also report that small (or even one-person) marketing teams serve the entire company.

They might pay for the content, but it doesn’t seem like they pay an awful lot of attention to the content, does it?

Bill is not content with that 😔 (Pun intended.)

After all, he predicted that as the web evolves, the content will become more and more important .

How “content is king” transcends digital marketing

Let’s be clear about one thing: the concept of “content is king” has transcended digital marketing.

It’s not a new idea. It’s not just for online content either. But it is an idea that, whether you’re aware of it or not, is influencing every decision you make as a marketer.

The prophetic phrase changed much more than just digital marketing. Gates argued his statement using down-to-earth examples when the Internet was still an abstract concept to so many.

Paid advertising is becoming less effective

We’re part of a culture that uses AdBlock and downloads third-party YouTube applications to their phone to get rid of ads. It’s not a coincidence that “advertising” methods like influencer marketing are thriving. The more natural ways of selling are what people long for .

But that’s not all. Content can fill the gaps that advertising can’t .

When you consider search intent, there are a ton of searches where people just don’t want to see an ad . They’re looking to solve a problem with knowledge, not with a purchase. It just makes sense to establish a presence in that area and tap into the early to mid stages of your funnel.

Social media is booming – and that’s content, too!

What is TikTok if not a library of content?

Sure, a lot of it is purely for entertainment purposes.

But when people started using TikTok to search for holiday and restaurant destinations, it showed the true potential of the platform and its search engine.

And then there’s the “bone of contention” on traditional platforms – LinkedIn, and especially Facebook. If ads were effective and people wanted to see them, do you think these platforms would “crush” the organic reach on their platforms?

Every marketer and their dog says they can’t remember the last time something had a satisfying organic reach on Facebook. Ads bring money, but since they can’t compete with organic content, social media platforms have to “silence” organic posts and force you to spend on ads.

The rise of generative AI – is content still king?

Absolutely. And here’s why.

In the simplest terms, the mainstream generative AI is like an auto-complete tool. That’s how it works behind the scenes.

The language model analyses the dataset and predicts which word should come after the previous one.

That’s hardly content creation, is it?

It’s also prone to the quality of the dataset. Initially, ChatGPT doesn’t have knowledge prior to 2021. This renders it useless for a ton of writing use cases.

So no, you don’t need to worry about being replaced as a writer. And you can put away the champagne if you thought you’ll pass as a writer just by using generative AI tools.

Natural content is still king. It won’t be replaced by AI that soon, if ever.

Web content is king, and it’s a well-oiled machine

One thing leads to the other, and suddenly everyone wins.

Or so you would think.

It might be controversial and hard to believe, but as a society, we still don’t understand what Bill Gates was telling us in 1996. That applies to both content creators and readers. It’s harder to blame the latter, but I won’t cut marketers any slack.

The long answer is that Google’s algorithms have evolved from basic keyword crawlers, and technology like voice search has popularised natural long-tail keyphrases.

Your website gets most of its online exposure based on the user experience for both organic and paid traffic. That will only be more and more relevant.

Examples of content types for business

As Gates pointed out, “content” is a broad term. It’s usually treated as a synonym of raw copy, which is an accurate but not comprehensive description.

At the core, all the types we’ll list derive from copy and so does traditional content. TV, radio and other media can’t exist without it. Just think about the resources required to produce a movie, then take the script away and the entire industry collapses.

But going back to business website content, the core types are:

Website copy and written resources . Just like with movies, if you build a website without telling a story, it will be meaningless. From headings and the call to action text to blog articles and downloadable resources, the written content is at the core of everything you do online, affecting your conversion rates, organic traffic and brand identity.
Video . Dubbed as the future years ago and proven to increase conversions, video is a step forward from the written content. It can be included in the hero section or as an engaging separator for your lengthy articles. It also speaks to our lazy nature. People would rather see your story than read it .
Visual content . One of the content types that often gets diminished to “images”. Visual content includes your display ads, UI elements, infographics, descriptive and decorative photos in your articles and viral social media pictures.
Social posts . While they’re created using all of the above, they are a content type on their own. Social platforms are a form of media on their own and while they are often put in the same category, they’re also much different. The best times to post vary between them, they promote different types of content, your tone of voice on Twitter and LinkedIn doesn’t have to and shouldn’t be the same, the organic reach on Facebook isn’t as efficient as on Twitter, and more.
Services . While it might sound surprising at first, your services can be a form of digital content. It won’t apply to most industries but if you include a web app on your site, such as a handy calculator for your potential customers, this will give them an incredible value that your competitors can’t match with written content.

How to write content like a King

Writing for the Web is nothing like the essays you had to power through at school.

Grammar and style are still important, but the latter totally differs from what you’re used to.

Originally published Dec 03, 2019 9:07:00 AM, updated May 8 2024.

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Why What Bill Gates Said About the Internet in 1996 Is Truer Than Ever Today The Microsoft founder's prediction definitely came true.

By Luis Congdon Edited by Dan Bova Dec 5, 2017

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

In 1996 Bill Gates wrote an article titled, " Content Is King ." Fast-forward over 20 years, and those words are truer than ever. Gates predicted that the "big money" would be made with content. The growth of Facebook , Twitter, Instagram , and blogging clearly illustrates the wisdom of one of the greatest business minds of our era.

Related: 3 Ways Content Brought My Company Back From Bankruptcy

Since Gates wrote his famous words, the internet has vastly grown, and the importance of content has increased immensely. At the same time, the attention span of humans has tremendously diminished. According to various studies, humans these days have a " shorter attention span than a goldfish ," and this means it's not just enough to have content -- but instead we need material that is everywhere our clients go. If your perfect client is on Facebook for 15 minutes, then 10 minutes on YouTube and later 20 minutes on Google , it's ideal to have content on each medium, thus increasing your impact, reach and likelihood to make sales. Having more content these days is essential to business. In fact, a recent study from Demand Gen Report found that buyers now like to consume four to seven pieces of content before engaging with a sales representative.

Understanding that content is crucial to sales isn't new; many of us already know this. The hang-up for most entrepreneurs and companies isn't creating content, but rather what kind of material to make. On top of that, the dilemma of our current time is how to make content that helps us be everywhere possible. As one of my friends and colleagues, Scott Oldford, says, " Being omnipresent is the key to online sales ." Ideally, we're everywhere our perfect customers are, and when they're ready to buy, we're there.

Related: How to Produce Content That Doubles Your Sales Funnel Conversion Rate

Start with one type of content.

Whatever your forte with content is, I suggest you start now. If you enjoy writing, start putting words to paper. If you enjoy doing video, get in front of the camera, or if it's recording audio then begin that podcast now. Get started now, because content, like wine, matures over time and as it ages strengthens and will gain more traffic, views and impact.

Repurpose your content for increased visibility.

The next step to content production mastery is taking one type of content and repurposing it for the other mediums. If you can master this, you'll be more likely to stand out in the minds of your potential clients. Not only that, when your fans and leads are ready to buy, you'll be there.

If you take a moment to study the most prolific and popular content creators, you'll see they've found ways to repurpose their work so it can be everywhere their fans are. Take, for example, actor, comedian and podcaster, Joe Rogan ; he repurposes his YouTube videos for his widely popular podcast. When Rogan records his YouTube show, he also takes that content and posts it to iTunes as an audio-only show. Similarly, Lewis Howes has found this recipe to be a winning formula for racking up views, fans and omnipresence on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Pandora and all the other pod feeders online. Both these content creators have found that by repurposing their work for multiple mediums, they win more fans and ultimately help themselves become kings online.

Related: 4 Ways Instant Gratification Has Changed Content Marketing

In the pursuit to meet fans wherever they are, we can take our content and pull snippets for social media purposes. One master of this method is top-ranked blogger and multiple time New York Times bestselling author Tim Ferriss. He pulls sound bites from his top-ranking podcast and puts them on every social media channel possible. Another ingenious way that Ferriss repurposes his show is by taking his interviews and transcribing them for his books like Tools Of Titans and Tribe Of Mentors . Now, if you follow these methods, you can take one piece of content and use it to be visible on YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, social media and anywhere that sells books (e.g., Amazon and Barnes & Nobles).

If you've been struggling with content that makes you visible everywhere, you don't need to stress yourself out by thinking you need to produce unique content for every medium. What you can do instead is choose whatever method you like best, present it that way and then repurpose it.

In my opinion, podcasting makes it very easy. One recording can turn into a book, a transcribed blog post, a YouTube video with still image layered over it, and a snippet can be grabbed for easy posting on social media. That being said, if you prefer blogging or video, start there. You can always take your blog post, record it for video and audio, and push it out to iTunes and all the other pod feeders online. The point is, if you want to be king on the internet, you'll need content, and in this modern era it's important you learn how to make content that helps you stand out everywhere possible.

Related Video: 3 Great Tips to Engage Your Audience and Build Your Brand With Content Marketing

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Content is King: Bill Gates knew it in 1996, editors still know it now

Journalists from around the country were in Indianapolis last week for the meeting of the Associated Press Media Editors national organization. The theme of the conference was: Content is King.

The theme happens to be the same three words that topped an essay written by Microsoft visionary Bill Gates in January 1996. His view of powers and challenges of the Internet as an information source are remarkably relevant today.

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting,” Gates began, in a piece copyrighted by Microsoft in 2001. “The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.”

Gates went on to write that “content” can be defined very broadly on the Internet, and predicted there would be vast opportunities for companies who could supply information or entertainment. He likened the Internet to “the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience.”

He wrote that he expected intense competition with ample failure as well as success in all areas of content. He saw need for printed publications — he wrote about magazines, not newspapers — to provide content with depth and interactivity well beyond what can be offered on a printed page.

He wrote nearly two decades ago: “If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.”

You can see how his vision has evolved by looking no farther than the H-T. Virtually all news from our newsroom is published first on HeraldTimesOnline.com, updated often, and then published in complete form in the printed H-T the next morning. Exceptions include timeless features and more in-depth stories designed to make sense of more complex issues.

Video and audio appears on the website daily, with multiple videos published many days. Reader involvement comes through comments, online chats with staff members and public figures, polls, submitted stories and photographs — as well as social media such as Facebook and Twitter that Gates didn’t include in his 1996 essay. Movement since 1996 toward digital publication has been huge — though legacy media such as newspapers and television stations still dawdled along for the first half of that time, with the energy ramped up in the past five years or so.

Gates said something else relevant in 1996 that continues to challenge media companies.

“For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time.”

As loyal H-T readers know, much of our online content has required a subscription since 2003. Some is free, but some is not. That has worked for our company, and more and more newspapers have moved that direction in the last three or four years, realizing that producing relevant, targeted content has significant costs. It’s not a matter of the Internet thriving, as Gates saw it — but rather content-providers.

Gates closed his essay: “Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences and products — a marketplace of content.”

Gates thought then that content was king, and APME repeated that theme in Indianapolis last week. Our job in the H-T newsroom is to constantly keep that in mind, both for print and digital publication.

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The breakfast event is scheduled for 9 a.m. (registration opens at 8:30) at Liberty Ballroom, 2100 Liberty Drive. The 24 Everyday Heroes nominated by readers and selected by a panel will be introduced and receive plaques. They also will be honored in a special section to be published in the Wednesday newspaper. Author and inspirational speaker Jill Bolte Taylor is the keynote speaker.

“Content is King” – Bill Gates, 1996

Nearly two decades ago, Bill Gates declared “CONTENT IS KING”! And so it has been. Ruling over the interwebs.

Content is King… Content is King… Content is King…

The phrase has become a mantra repeated over and over again religiously by SEO’s and internet marketers. Unfortunately sometimes to the point where it has lost all meaning.

In January 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay titled “Content is King”, which was published on the Microsoft website. He begins by saying:

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.”

Needless to say, Gates was right in his predictions. Content is what drives the Internet as we know it. The most popular online applications in the world are the ones in which we populate the Internet with more content. Social networks, blog hosts, video sharing websites… And then of course, you have search engines like Google who domineer the internet, encouraging us to fuel this greed for even more content by providing us with a platform to explore and discover new content.

In Bill Gates’ essay, he goes on to say that:

“One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create.”

Content marketing online has never been easier. Everyone’s doing it! And true, that may mean that it’s getting more competitive but you need a little indirect competition to help market content. It’s a game of borrowing audiences and networking, and that’s just not possible when you’re closing yourself off from the world in fear that a competitor is going to steal your ideas. Your ideas have no stage to perform upon, let alone an audience, if you keep them to yourself.

So what is content marketing?

To explain it like you’re five, content marketing is the creation of content with the intention of distributing it, to engage with highly targeted audiences, and attract new customers (and backlinks!) in the process. Essentially, the content is functioning in a multitude of ways:

Increasing visibility.
Encouraging backlinks for SEO, and social shares.
Optimising the website for long tail keywords that are harder to target through the website’s static pages.
Generating new customers, or clients, or whatever your end goal is (hopefully).

You have to treat the content as an additional, less-obvious product. We have to first pitch it to its initial audience (via direct social media or contacting bloggers), then fingers crossed the product will sell to the masses. And the masses are the biggest marketers of them all! As we read in “ Appealing to the Narcissism of the User” . The biggest sellers of any product are the happy customers/readers/followers promoting your product within their own circles, causing a ripple effect for their friends’ friends and then their friends before it eventually dies down and no one cares anymore. Until two years from now, it suddenly becomes relevant again somehow and gets dug back up out of its grave. That’s unless you’re creating evergreen content, and by that we mean content that’s going to stay fresh and relevant for generations to come!

So… what did Bill Gates mean by “content is king”?

That’s Sumner Redstone. A couple years before Bill Gates’ wrote his “Content is King” essay, this is the guy that originally coined the phrase, in its modern context of course. He’s your typical 91 year old billionaire really. Majority owner and Chairman of the Board of National Amusements, through which he and his family are also majority owners of CBS, Viacom, MTV, Paramount Pictures, etc.

Sumner Redstone’s definition of content was rather broad – ranging from movies, TV shows, music videos… any form of entertainment really. But, of course, it’s still relevant. Sumner has his pokey little finger in more than a few rather palatable pies, to say the least. (Pokey little finger pictured above. Pie removed for a clearer shot of said finger.) The more content you have to provide, the more of an audience you’re going to draw in.

The whole point of content marketing is to create as many points of entry to your website, and therefore your business, as possible. Unfortunately this means that the “homepage” era is on its way out.

In 1995, a year before Bill Gates’ “Content is King”, Gates wrote a memo titled “The Internet Tidal Wave” addressed to all of Microsoft’s executive staff. Interestingly, the memo is dated three months prior to the release of MSN. In the memo, Gates states that:

“Customers will come to our ‘home page’ in unbelievable numbers and find out everything we want them to know.”

And they did. In flocks.

But in this current generation of internet, people have to be very committed to a website to visit it directly by homepage. Gone are the days of pretty-ing up our homepage and prioritising it as the main feature of our website. The header/sidebar menu and social sharing buttons have become much more important! Most of the content that we consume on a daily basis, we come about it via different means. Organic search, social media, referring link…

But does that mean that the homepage has become nothing more than a vanity page? A hub of menu options that could just as easily fit into your header/sidebar/whatever menu, as it does on every other page? Is the homepage becoming obsolete due to the growth in content discovery? Of course not! The homepage just needs more of a purpose to serve. It needs to be populated with some kind of dynamic content to keep it relevant with the online browsing habits of today. A regular change of homepage content also helps to keep the homepage fresh!

It doesn’t need to be anything mesmerising or overloaded with information, you just need to ask yourself: once a visitor’s seen a homepage, is there a need for them to go back to it later?

Look at websites such as the Daily Mail, Reddit, Buzzfeed. These are the types of websites that people are visiting directly, straight to their homepage, time and time again. Sites that aggregate content. Because people know that every time they visit, there’ll be something new waiting for them. They then develop a loyalty to the website. Your website won’t just be a forgettable result at the end of a Google search. But the likelihood in this comparison is that you’re not a news site, are you. Otherwise you would know all this. But wait, don’t you have latest blog posts, Tweets, Facebook posts, and Instagram pics?

So how does Bill Gates define content?

He states in his “Content is King” essay that:

“When it comes to an interactive network, such as the Internet, the definition of ‘content’ becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important.”

“But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.”

No company is too small to participate. This has been proven. You have biscuit companies, printing companies and insurance companies all creating and sharing popular content that has become viral far beyond what you would first imagine considering their business. No company is too small, and no business is too “dull”. And if you can supply information and entertain, then you’ve reached the jackpot.

“I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests.”

Also true. Looking at social websites such as Reddit, where an entire community can be created around even the most bizarre of interests, no one can deny that the internet has encouraged a unique dynamic to socialising. Even Bill Gates himself has been known to frequent Reddit from time to time (see photograph above!).

“Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions.”

“But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.”

“If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.”

Bill Gates predicted it all! 18 years later, and here we are. Interacting with other readers of an article in real time, via the on-page commenting system or a hashtag or on social bookmarking sites to which the article was submitted. We get personally involved with the content, and in return receive “extremely up-to-date information” via multiple sources, in the form of other publishings, audio and even video!

Finally, Bill Gates signs off saying:

“Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.”

A Marketplace of Content

Like any marketplace, you only want to buy products from credible and reputable sources. You want quality content, not the cheap knockoff some weirdo in a smelly trench coat is trying to sell you on the street corner.

Maybe you’ll find something of amazing quality with an unrecognisable brand, in which case you’ll flaunt the find to your friends boasting of exclusivity and how you found it first.

And this is where our perception of content and its value, as SEO’s and internet marketers, has shifted dramatically with the introduction of Google Authorship. Google now wants writers to claim ownership of their content so that their algorithm and our peers can judge us by the content that we produce. It’s hard to ignore the paranoid murmurings of the SEO community, discussing the elusive author rank and what that means for the way in which we market our content. What is the best way to build up an author’s authority in a subject? Are we going to start needing brand ambassadors to represent the brand, so that we can build them up as the subject authority? If we haven’t already, should we be employing ghostwriters to write in our name?

In the penultimate paragraph of Bill Gates’ “The Internet Tidal Wave”:

“The next few years are going to be very exciting as we tackle these challenges and opportunities. The Internet is a tidal wave. It changes the rules. It is an incredible opportunity as well as an incredible challenge.”

Bill Gates’ original “Content is King” article can be read in its entirety via WayBack Machine here, but no copies of this essay have been found in the archives of the current Microsoft website.

You can find a PDF copy of the original “The Internet Tidal Wave” here .

13 Comments

Are we going to start needing brand ambassadors to represent the brand… I think SEOs should become brand ambassadors for their clients. Although it’s quite skillful to completely embody a brand’s identity when working with numerous clients.

Love the MS home page from the 90s!

This is one of the most entertaining and informative posts I have ever read about content marketing, \n\nThe post covers the definition of content from many perspectives and this is what I like about it.\n\nNicely Done.

Good post Ria, and nice job digging up that old 90’s MS stuff.\nYou summed up pretty well the reasoning for the trillions of pieces of content added to the internet daily, the lion’s share of which will likely be read by hardly anybody.

reminded me like watched “back to the future” by Michael J Fox

Both of them (Bill Gates and Sumner Redstone) were such a fortune teller :) Time and now, content has proven itself to be the sole successor of this dynamic world. I believe if marketing is a nation then content is certainly the king. Glad reading this insightful piece. This is awesome…!

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content IS everything

The term “content is king” has become quite the controversial topic recently. Some prefer to say that backlinks are, in fact, more important. I believe that both go hand in hand. You can’t build backlinks without content, and it has to be good high quality content. This is especially true in the age of white-hat SEO techniques.

We recently published an article on keyword research and how to find trending topics to blog about. During our research, we came across this page and referenced it in our post. I don’t think many people are aware it was Bill Gates who coined the terms more than 20 years ago!

Thanks for providing your research, it was definitely helpful to us in putting together our information.

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The Origins and Paradox of Content Is King

Bill Gates, Sumner Redstone are both credited with articulating that “content is king.” Understanding what that means in the new world order explains why some companies emerged as the winners even if they didn’t own any content.

The Origins of Content Is King

Viacom’s late founder Sumner Redstone is widely associated with the saying “content is king” even though it was popularized in 1986 by Bill Gates. But the first reference to it actually dates back to 1974 in Magazine Editing and Production :

"Content is king. It is the meaning that counts. Form and technical considerations, though important, cannot substitute for content. J.W. Click and Russell N. Baird, authors, on how to pick the best magazine photos."

Interestingly, cable pioneer John Malone and Redstone both started in distribution – Malone with TCI and Redstone with his father’s teather chain, National Amusement. Both men however eventually realized that owning the pipes is valuable, but the underlying content was king.

When Redstone said “content is king,” it was in the context that additional distribution outlets give rights holders new ways to monetize the content. The Internet’s fragmentation of media dramatically increased the outlets for content owners to distribute programming, which open up new revenue streams for content, and this unlock value .

But, the Internet’s democratization of media also eroded the power of gatekeepers and broke the dam: today there’s an infinite supply of content with the advent of user-generated content. As demand from marketers is not as elastic as supply of content created, it drove advertising rates down in the web’s first phases. Indeed, to quote Gates:

"For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions.

The Paradox of Content Is King

Paradoxically, the “content is king” mantra gave content owners a false sense of security, thinking that they were entitled to revenues. The web’s democratization of content altered the balance of power, with distribution platforms like Google, Facebook, etc. owning the last mile into audience’s homes and thus, content without distribution isn’t enough to win; nor is distribution without content. But despite their vast riches, tech firms have actually held back from owning content outright. Why? The answer is demand and supply.

By the Time You Have An Economic Incentive, It’s Too Late

While early on the economics didn’t give content owners an incentive to embrace distribution on the Web, today, the worlds of content and audience are blurring into one due to the fortunes at stake:

The irony of course is that if content is king, how do you explain that the most valuable companies are predominantly in the distribution game ? One reason of course is that technology was scalable and benefited from better unit economics: produce software one time, sell it infinitely with ever-decreasing marginal costs.

For storytellers to win, they need to compete on both sides of the ball: content production as well as distribution . But for distribution companies to win, they just need access to the content – be it through licensing, acquisition or ownership.

Here is Gates’ full essay titled “Content is King”, which he published on the Microsoft website in January 1996:

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.

When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of “content” becomes very wide. For example, computer software is a form of content-an extremely important one, and the one that for Microsoft will remain by far the most important. But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.

One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create. In a sense, the Internet is the multimedia equivalent of the photocopier. It allows material to be duplicated at low cost, no matter the size of the audience. The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet. For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture. I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests. Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions. But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm.

There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium. If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.

A question on many minds is how often the same company that serves an interest group in print will succeed in serving it online. Even the very future of certain printed magazines is called into question by the Internet. For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative. Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals. Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.

For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn’t working yet, and it may not for some time. So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue.

In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information. A user can click on the ad to get additional information-and an advertiser can measure whether people are doing so. But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total.

Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different. Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly. As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off.

Some content companies are experimenting with subscriptions, often with the lure of some free content. It’s tricky, though, because as soon as an electronic community charges a subscription, the number of people who visit the site drops dramatically, reducing the value proposition to advertisers. A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate. But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis. This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences. Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.”

Gates may have made his fortune in software, but he had made some bets on content, as well. Of note, he established Corbis in 1989 as Interactive Home Systems.

As technology made marginal distribution quite efficient, digital content emerged as the new software, but the purveyors of technology – Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. – eventually realized they didn’t need to own the underlying content, they just needed to offer it as a means to an end.

Ironically, the Web removed many of the barriers to entry to earning a living through content. While context is king, the demand and supply reality and democratization weakened the relative power of content. In distribution, it becomes harder than ever to build scale, but those who command it benefit disproportionality as a result.

Marc Andreessen boasted a decade ago that software was eating the world , he was right and everything that ensued reflected that. With distribution pipes built, the attention has shifted to filling those pipes, and in that context, content is the new software ( watch my recent interview on Bloomberg on that theme ), or check out: Is video content the new software?

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Bill Gates Essay: Content Is King

Jun 6, 2020

Today we’re going to cover an essay Bill Gates wrote in 1996, a year and change after his infamous Internet Tidal Wave memo, called Content is King, a term that has now become ubiquitous. It’s a bit long but perfectly explains the Internet business model until such time as there was so much content that the business model had to change.

See, once anyone could produce content and host it for free, like in the era of Blogger, the model flipped. So here goes:

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting.

The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.

But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.

The Internet also allows information to be distributed worldwide at basically zero marginal cost to the publisher. Opportunities are remarkable, and many companies are laying plans to create content for the Internet.

For example, the television network NBC and Microsoft recently agreed to enter the interactive news business together. Our companies will jointly own a cable news network, MSNBC, and an interactive news service on the Internet. NBC will maintain editorial control over the joint venture.

I expect societies will see intense competition-and ample failure as well as success-in all categories of popular content-not just software and news, but also games, entertainment, sports programming, directories, classified advertising, and on-line communities devoted to major interests.

Printed magazines have readerships that share common interests. It’s easy to imagine these communities being served by electronic online editions.

But to be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium.

If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will. They need to have audio, and possibly video. They need an opportunity for personal involvement that goes far beyond that offered through the letters-to-the-editor pages of print magazines.

For example, the Internet is already revolutionizing the exchange of specialized scientific information. Printed scientific journals tend to have small circulations, making them high-priced. University libraries are a big part of the market. It’s been an awkward, slow, expensive way to distribute information to a specialized audience, but there hasn’t been an alternative.

Now some researchers are beginning to use the Internet to publish scientific findings. The practice challenges the future of some venerable printed journals.

Over time, the breadth of information on the Internet will be enormous, which will make it compelling. Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.

So far, at least, most of the money and effort put into interactive publishing is little more than a labor of love, or an effort to help promote products sold in the non-electronic world. Often these efforts are based on the belief that over time someone will figure out how to get revenue.

But today the amount of subscription revenue or advertising revenue realized on the Internet is near zero-maybe $20 million or $30 million in total. Advertisers are always a little reluctant about a new medium, and the Internet is certainly new and different.

Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising. One reason is that many advertisers use big images that take a long time to download across a telephone dial-up connection. A magazine ad takes up space too, but a reader can flip a printed page rapidly.

As connections to the Internet get faster, the annoyance of waiting for an advertisement to load will diminish and then disappear. But that’s a few years off.

A major reason paying for content doesn’t work very well yet is that it’s not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate.

But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel, you won’t be writing a check or getting a bill in the mail for a nickel. You’ll just click on what you want, knowing you’ll be charged a nickel on an aggregated basis.

This technology will liberate publishers to charge small amounts of money, in the hope of attracting wide audiences.

Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.”

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The Origin of Content is King

The man synonymous with the term ‘content is king’ – passed away in 2020. Sumner spent his lifetime expanding the Boston based theatre company National Amusements his father started in to tv and movies. Today known as ViacomCBS, though National Amusements remains active in the cinema business.

However, a quick Google of the phrase ‘content is king’, shows a Bill Gates essay as the originator. So who said it first?

Turns out neither was, two authors beat them to the punch. J.W. Click and Russell N. Baird first used the term in the 1974 edition of ,

Now if that isn’t timeless. I could put that in any presentation and date it 2020 and no one would bat an eyelid.

Sumner did , referencing competitors’ focus on distribution mechanisms but he believed the best content would always endure. In hindsight this makes sense, but it is a narrative that is on a repeat cycle. Distribution or content.

Then in 1996 along came Bill Gates who penned the essay: , which is where we see it most referenced. Bill saw that content being delivered over the internet was an inevitability 24 years ago.

It’s worth a if you’ve got a couple of minutes.

There we have it. The content is king phrase has lived on through multiple incarnations, from magazine photography, to the cable roll up era and our present day digital era. Thanks to for their outline and guidance.

Why do people say content is king?

They say this, to highlight, that it is the content that consumers seek out. And it is what they consume.

Distribution helps get eyeballs but content is what consumers will seek out. So you can have all the distribution but if you don’t have the best content, it won’t help.

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Content is King

Brief Explanation
Detailed explanation
“Content is king” in Content Marketing

“Content is king” in SEO

Content is king: brief explanation.

“Content is king” is an often cited quote in the world of online marketing , search engine marketing and content marketing . Behind this is the belief that the content, the text in particular, is central to the success of a website.

Content is King: Detailed Explanation

The quote “content is king” is originally from an essay Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote in 1996. In it, he describes the future of the Internet as a marketplace for content. The phrase “content is king” is not new, but because of the increased focus on content marketing strategies, the quote is used very often.

The success of websites depends on quality content. A website must offer content that meets the demands of users, and it should be optimized for search engines such as Google and Bing.

“Content Is King” in Content Marketing

Contentbird ran a study that determined that 73 percent of companies have focused content marketing strategies. Content marketing is a marketing strategy centered around the visitor’s interests with quality content instead of advertising. This evolved from the fact that users no longer pay attention to the daily onslaught of advertising messages on sites. In online advertising, this is known as banner blindness.

For this reason, companies try to create content that provides value to the visitor. Thus, the perception of the company is positively influenced by the public. In addition, companies can keep track of different content marketing strategies:

positioning yourself as an expert
improve brand awareness
improve search engine ranking
Acquire and retain customers
Generate (blog) traffic
Generate new leads
Generate backlinks

The tools for content marketing include, for example, whitepapers , infographics, ebooks and blogs . Seeding of content is placing it on social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

The basis for relevant content is quality text. Good web content fulfills a number of criteria:

target specific groups
entertaining and informative
reader-friendly, well structured and error free
optimized for search engines

To succeed with content marketing, in addition to high-quality content, a strategic approach is helpful. A content strategy can be divided into the following steps: content auditing, goal setting, planning, creation & publishing and sharing.

Unique, high-quality and current content is essential for good ranking in search engines like Google. During the early days of the Internet, websites were able to achieve a high ranking just by loading the text with keywords . Since then, Google has provided new updates like Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird that rate quality content increasingly higher.

A variety of factors influence the ranking.

The weighting is constantly analyzed by search engines for different factors. However, experts agree that the content of a website is one of the most important criteria for ranking in search engines.

Therefore, “content is king” in the SEO industry. Only with high-quality content can the ranking of a site be optimized.

The quote “content is king” is very often used in conjunction with content marketing and SEO. It implies that unique, high-quality, interesting and relevant content contributes significantly to the success of companies on the Internet. Companies should, therefore, primarily think of great content before they take further measures in their search engine optimization strategy. In content marketing, the quality of the content offered will decide the level of your success.

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10 Content Predictions Bill Gates Got Right in 1996

Twenty years or one score ago — during the dawn of email, Yahoo’s first IPO offering and Sandra Bullock’s magnum opus The Net — Bill Gates penned the 1996 essay “Content is King” . An ambitious forecast on the future of the internet, both Yahoo and even Microsoft have failed to capitalize on the Gates prophecy, but that’s not to say the “Content is King” mantra isn’t alive and well. In fact, his words may be more relevant now than ever…

1. Television as a footprint

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting,” opens Gates’ essay as he compares the early days of the internet to that of the 1950s era of broadcast TV. It was during this time that TV became a cornerstone of advertising plans — as well as a Mad Men subplot — boosting commercial spending to historical highs as the reach provided by that glowing box exceeded any other medium. And consumer consumption was more than willing to keep up with the hard sell, growing household spending more than tenfold from $12.3 million in 1949 to $128 million in 1951.

The historical TV numbers sound eerily familiar as today advertisers ramp up their paid media efforts to jockey for position among competitors. By 2019 it’s estimated that digital will account for 38 percent of global ad outlays , a proportion as large as TV, which has still clung to the biggest share of spending for more than a decade. “But what about that ROI?” you’ll cry. In 2014, US consumers spent $278 billion online and that number just keeps on growing .

2. The definition of content is wide

“When it comes to an interactive network such as the Internet, the definition of ‘content’ becomes very wide,” says Bill Gates, and he’s not wrong. Web content encompasses anything that is textual, visual or even aural in nature. That Snapchat you flipped to your friend? It’s content. The Instagram of your perfectly arranged latte, croissant and morning read… #BreakfastClub? It’s content. The autoplay ad that forces extra loud audio through your browser? That’s unfortunately content too.

Social media has helped blend the boundaries between traditional text and multimedia content , making the role of a marketing strategist all the more important in being able to wrangle each of these delivery systems, at the most appropriate time. It’s up to brands to follow the audience and engage through the method they choose rather than attempt to fit their latest campaign into a square hole.

3. No company is too small

“But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate,” says Bill (I feel we’re on a first name basis by now). The caveat to this statement is a particularly interesting one in light of recent developments in social media.

“Over 1 million SMBs [small-to-medium businesses] have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently said in the company’s Q1 earnings call . “And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are probably One million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time.” Case in point? Content marketing in the social sphere has levelled the playing field between brands. Sure we can argue that organic referral is increasingly being curtailed at the expense of paid media (here’s looking at you Facebook), but still the cost of such placement is significantly lower than traditional TV/radio/print advertising.

4. Print will diversify or die

“To be successful online, a magazine can’t just take what it has in print and move it to the electronic realm. There isn’t enough depth or interactivity in print content to overcome the drawbacks of the online medium,” says Bill. In the past decade, no other industry has struggled as much as print in adapting to the online revolution. Newspapers and magazines have suffered dwindling subscription numbers, as well as a loss in ad revenue , as readers turn to the internet for free news 24/7. Even media pay walls have failed to stem the loss, while new media companies like Gawker and Buzzfeed prosper under the digital reign.

5. Give them something of value

“If people are to be expected to put up with turning on a computer to read a screen, they must be rewarded with deep and extremely up-to-date information that they can explore at will.” I’m sure when Bill Gates first made this claim, he had no idea of the future dominance of tablets and smartphones allowing for constant connectivity anywhere. It’s less of a chore to “turn on a computer and read a screen,” but still the sentiment remains that people’s valuable time should only be taken up with in-depth, quality content. This is the basis for all content marketing, but often in the squeeze of 140 characters, instantaneous reaction and ever-increasing post frequency, it’s easy to forget.

6. International reach on a local scale

“Although the gold rush atmosphere today is primarily confined to the United States, I expect it to sweep the world as communications costs come down and a critical mass of localized content becomes available in different countries.”

Almost two decades after Bill Gates predicted the rise in global connectivity, more than 40 percent of the world’s population can access the internet. Of course, this also highlights the unconnected 60 percent, but increasingly this number is shrinking thanks to philanthropic initiatives . Critical mass will one day be achieved, leading to increased demand for localized geo-targeted content adapted to suit language, currency and culture.

7. The ROI struggle

While some digital marketing tactics have the ability to yield instant results, content marketing is not always able to deliver a quick ROI (that’s if an agency is even tracking the effect at all ). In fact, it can sometimes takes weeks, months or even a year for lead generation uplift thanks to the compound interest effect of accumulated content. In that way an effective content marketing strategy can be likened to a financial portfolio with a year-on-year return through a balanced mix of products. Hey, I bet you never thought of a blog post as stock before!

The point is, with such long-term returns it can be difficult for marketers to measure the real ROI as, so often, content acts as a first touchpoint in the consumer journey. Increasingly we are seeing more opportunities for conversions directly within social platforms, but as Bill surmises, the short-term gains are still minimal.

8. Attract attention

“In the long run, advertising is promising. An advantage of interactive advertising is that an initial message needs only to attract attention rather than convey much information.”

With so many brands on social media vying for attention, more importance should be placed on attracting a quality audience rather than preaching to the masses with an incessant stream of brand hoorah. High-value and relevant content will always have its place in appealing to the ideal persona, while problems can occur with brands that are focused solely on boosting their social numbers; gleaning as many likes, retweets and shares as is digitally possible. These brands will essentially be left shouting into an empty void as their information overload is left hanging like an awkward silence at a party.

9. Ads: I hate you

“Some reluctance on the part of advertisers may be justified, because many Internet users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising.”

Believe it or not, but people don’t want to shop where they socialize. No really, in between posts from your sister about her new kitchen renovation – “So in love with this tiled finish!” – people couldn’t care less about the [insert brand name] ad for an extendable duster. Unless they happen to be thinking their ceiling fan is looking kinda furry and need a new duster at that very moment. It’s part of the reason why banner advertising has seen such a stark decline in effectiveness as users are a lot savvier than marketers sometimes give credit. That come-hither “I dare you to click me” plea is about as enticing as a “Do you come here often” pickup line and reeks of just as much desperation.

In light of the ad banner’s demise, native advertising has seen a surge in popularity among publishers. Far from a perfect model in itself – just ask John Oliver for his take – native advertising is the next best thing for brand awareness when, as Bill puts it, “users are less-than-thrilled about seeing advertising.” The lines between news and ads may be blurring on some sites, but your morning digest has to get funded somehow .

10. A marketplace of ideas

“Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products-a marketplace of content.”

Finally we are left with Bill Gate’s parting thoughts in that those who succeed in crafting high-value content will make the internet a better place. Excuse me for getting all Louis Armstrong on you, but it has to be said that this “wonderful world” can be balanced with a little give-and-take between both parties. Users can accept that digital marketing is a necessary evil for publishers to monetize, companies to profit and the economy to keep trundling along, while marketers can agree to more transparency and less spammy practices. We’re linked by the same networks so can’t we all just get along?

Emma Jones, Content and Social Strategist

Contact DAC today to find out more!

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Why content is no longer king — and what it means for education technology.

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President and Founder of Cymorg , a digital Leadership Development solution that combines gamification, data science & business simulations.

In 1996, Bill Gates, the then-richest person in the world, wrote an influential essay in which he coined a pithy phrase while predicting a major trend in the brave new world of internet commerce. Surveying the fortunes of the wide variety of industries that the television age had spawned, Gates predicted that the "long-term winners" of the internet revolution would be those who, like their broadcasting predecessors, "used the medium to deliver information and entertainment."

The phrase he used to encapsulate this thought: "Content is king."

Gates located the broad commercial opportunity in the production and distribution of high-quality content for the consumption of the public. People would queue up patiently, money in hand, for the opportunity to buy and view good content. They would reward better content more, and the internet would be nothing more than a super-efficient “marketplace for content.”

But that was 25 years ago. Gates is no longer the richest man in the world, and content simply isn't king. Content is — from my perspective — cheap. There are brands that show me content every minute of the day, and the only thing they seek in exchange is the information I might provide by clicking on an ad. Similarly, when you read an article, you can often do so for a low cost or for free. Halfway through the article, you might even be ready to stop reading because content is so plentiful — to the point of utter ubiquity. I believe the only thing in short supply is our time, so we have redefined content quality in terms of brevity these days. Content has to be shorter than the average person's attention span. Otherwise, it gets no attention.

It turns out that an even older and even pithier phrase by Marshall McLuhan had it right all along. “The medium,” he had said, years before Gates’ revelation , “is the message.” This tells me that the way the content gets packaged and delivered determines the success of the communication process more than the content itself. It needs to be expressed in a way that's relevant to the individual recipient, and it should provoke thought and action.

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In other words, it's the context that is, if not the king, then at least the king-maker.

McLuhan also differentiated between "hot" media, which allows for passive intake by recipients, and "cool" media, which requires active participation. What I believe dethroned "content as king" was the utter "hotness" of all online content. In my experience, many of us stare at images flickering across our screens, senses numbed but unable to look away. From my perspective, many of us are incapable of retrieving from memory online content that doesn’t grip us or force us to pause and think.

But what does all this mean for education technology in the post-pandemic world?

Simply this: You might have the world’s very best educational content at your disposal, but if you're about to disseminate it online, be aware that you'll be competing for attention. Your average recipient will likely have multiple tabs open simultaneously, of which your content will occupy exactly one, while the rest could be leading to social media websites, news outlets and more.

As a result, I believe capturing your audience's attention all boils down to how your content is to be delivered: by "hot," passive methods like a slide deck or videos, or by "cool" mechanisms that adapt to the consumer's input; progressively draw viewers into the material; force them to think hard and interact with the material; convert them from viewers into collaborators; and drown out all noise.

Education — outside a classroom — involves developing problem-solving capabilities in a specific context. This can only be learned by solving realistic and contextual problems oneself. For many people, watching someone describe how to solve a problem is something that can never compete with watching a funny video of what a cat did with a ball of wool.

Don’t get me wrong: Good quality content is, at the end of the day, indispensable. But it's the context in which the content is couched that determines whether recipients will comprehend the message, recall it and apply it correctly when needed. It's only when that happens that the content of education will truly be top dog again.

Long live the king.

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“Content is King” – Bill Gates

“Content is King” – Bill Gates.

In January 1996, Bill Gates wrote an essay entitled “Content is King”, which was published on Microsoft’s website.

In the article, he states, “The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to deliver information and entertainment.”

Despite being published over 25 years ago, his essay is still relevant to this day. Content is an integral part of so many businesses. Without it, you’ll have nothing.

We firmly believe that “Content is King” – there is no point having amazing hardware and software if your content doesn’t match up. Our dynamic team of content creators develop stunning 360° visual scapes that completely immerse our users, without the need for a virtual reality headset.

Experience is another key aspect of our platform – our dynamic, interactive scenes are as close to the real thing as possible. From the micro to the macro, arctic to savannah, we take users on a fantastic interactive journey. By using projection instead of VR headsets, which isolate and can unnerve, users can encounter and navigate these experiences together, creating unique opportunities for group participation.

With an ever growing library of content, we expand horizons through experience, learning and interactive exploration. Explore the galaxy to learn about the solar system. Swim underwater and interact with fish. Walk through a meadow and play with the butterflies. Board an underground train and learn how to navigate through tunnels and up an escalator – whatever you need, we have content to suit.

From our perspective, both content AND experience are king when it comes to our immersive platform.

The full article from Bill Gates can be found here .

If you’d like to find out more about Immersive Reality, contact us on 0161 731 0010 or email us at [email protected] . We’d love to hear from you!

You can also fill out our contact form here .

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Content Is King
Read the original essay by Bill Gates on why content is king in the Internet age, and how it applies today. Learn how content creation, distribution and monetization have evolved over time and across different media.
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ENT IS KING - BILL GATES (1/3/1996)Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Int. rnet, just as it was in broadcasting.The television revolution that began half a century ago spawned a number of industries, including the manufacturing of TV sets, but the long-term winners were those who used the medium to.
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C. I've had a frustrating time trying to find the original 'Content is King' article written by Bill Gates back in 1996. There's a few sites that have a copy of the essay, but nothing on the Microsoft site (it has been removed from the Bill Gates Published Writing page). Wayback Machine seems to be the only other option (thanks to ...
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In hindsight this makes sense, but it is a narrative that is on a repeat cycle. Distribution or content. Then in 1996 along came Bill Gates who penned the essay: Content is King, which is where we see it most referenced. Bill saw that content being delivered over the internet was an inevitability 24 years ago.
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Content is king
Introduction "Content is King" is the title of an essay which Microsoft founder Bill Gates originally presented in 1996. In this essay, Gates talks about the future of the internet, stating in his opening sentence that "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet (…)" (Gates, 1996, para. 1).
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Content Is King – Original Bill Gates Essay & how it applies today

Content Is King – Original Bill Gates Essay & how it applies today

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Content is King: Bill Gates knew it in 1996, editors still know it now

“Content is King” – Bill Gates, 1996

Content is King… Content is King… Content is King…

So what is content marketing?

So… what did Bill Gates mean by “content is king”?

So how does Bill Gates define content?

A Marketplace of Content

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The Origins and Paradox of Content Is King

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“Content is king” in SEO

Content is King: Detailed Explanation

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10 Content Predictions Bill Gates Got Right in 1996

1. Television as a footprint

2. The definition of content is wide

3. No company is too small

4. Print will diversify or die

5. Give them something of value

6. International reach on a local scale

7. The ROI struggle

8. Attract attention

9. Ads: I hate you

10. A marketplace of ideas

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