For better or worse, people know what “content marketing” is. It’s a genre. It also used to make me feel sick. I felt embarrassed, as if content marketing meant that I didn’t take writing seriously. I vented about it a few years ago.

When I started a business which worked with software companies on their writing and editing, there’s a good chance a client or friend would have described it as a “content marketing agency.” I felt embarrassed, and I tried to make sure it was not known as that.

There I came up with some other ways of describing it, and ultimately focused the business on being an editorial studio for engineering teams, I didn’t create enough momentum in that niche to continue. Eventually, I paused the business, took a job at Figma’s Story Studio  (formerly the editorial team, and the term “content marketing” was hardly if ever used), and continued practicing writing and editing in-house.

As the years have gone by, I realize that it might’ve been better for my business model if I leaned further into the “content marketing agency” angle, an idea friends easily understood and could describe to their friends. I could still disqualify clients who didn’t value storytelling or quality, or only wanted SEO work.

Whatever I called it—whether there was the label of “content marketing,” or not—there was no real limit to whether or not I pitched and delivered good work. When I worked as an editorial director at WorkOS, I remembered seeing a customer write about how the company was making some of their favorite “content marketing” on the internet. I had no idea anyone had any favorite content marketing, but they did. It planted a seed for a new way to think about it. 

Words offer glimpses into our imagined realities. A word you use to describe something may not mean the same thing to someone else.

“Content marketing” is an imagined reality. It could have been shaped. I could have made someone’s favorite content marketing. I could have told myself, and other people, a new story about it.

I tried changing the word and definition, to introduce a new way to think about writing, editing, and marketing in business. And it worked occasionally, though it also made things feel more confusing.

One way to see the discipline of branding is doing the work of encouraging people to see a company or person the way they want to be seen.