Chris Anderson’s post on LongTail.com contains an observation that is so obvious, it is missed by many self-appointed experts. (Okay, I’ll admit I live in that glass house.):

“Not only do small (Long Tail) publishers montetize their content at 3-5 times the rate of the larger publishers in PubMatic’s survey, but they’re improving in the current environment while the big publisher decline.

This is a fact of life in business-to-business-media, where the business model has long been focused on “free” distribution of content to decision-makers in specialized fields. The “cost per thousand” (CPM) model of advertising sales does not exist as a metric in this long-tail of the media world. Of course, if an advertiser selling a $100,000 piece of equipment can reach 90% of the decision makers in a market of 5,000 specifying engineers, then, hell-yeah, the publisher of that content should be able to monetize it at hundreds of times the rate of, say, a newsweekly.

The lesson here: Online, if you want to monetize content, the number of eyeballs seeing your content is less important than who those eyeballs belong to. And the more helpful that content is in assisting real people make important and valuable decisions, the more “monetizable” it will be.

Over on the Custom Media Craft blog on Hammock.com, I just posted some highlights from the annual survey conducted by the Custom Publishing Council called “Characteristics Study: A Look at the Volume and Type of Custom Publications in America”. (Note: Hammock Inc. was one of the founding members of the Custom Publishing Council). According to the survey, in 2007 a record number of marketers used custom media to promote their products and brands. Personally, I believe the numbers are still conservative as there are lots of online “content marketing” activities taking place that fall through the cracks of this research. For instance, most of the digital startups that have content creation for marketers (i.e., video distributed online) as part of their business model should probably be covered in this research — but aren’t.

One thing this survey underscores is a statistic that doesn’t click with many of my friends in the magazine and media industry who think of the magazine format as being, exclusively, a business model (i.e., consumer of B2B magazines). The magazine format is not just a business-model, it supports and serves other business models. I typically use university alumni or association magazines as examples here, but think of all the institutions and, now, companies, who use magazines and other media they create as platforms for fostering long term relationships with their constituencies (customers, alumni, members, supporters, etc.). While there are probably (and I’m guessing here) less than 20,000 magazines that have advertising and circulation-revenue as the focus of their business models, this survey indicates there are 143,173 magazines in America. Even if my number is low and their’s is high, the truth of magazine publishing is this: Most magazines in America “support” a business model — they aren’t a business model.

This is an important fact to consider when thinking about the “business model” of another media: blogging. Today — and forevermore — there will be only a small fraction of blogs that are, themselves, a business. The vast majority — as in 99% or more — of business-related blogs will support a business model (or a cause or institution or campaign), not be a business model.

Another thing: I confess: As much as I enjoy publishing — indeed everything about — magazines, I’m also very-much a new-media guy. I believe content-marketing, custom media, social media, conversational media — whatever you want to call it — should be front and center in any company or institution’s marketing effort (our company works with clients in doing just that). I see no “competition” or “conflict” or “irony” in me advocating new media while still championing the magazine format as the most compelling engagement media available.

At Hammock.com, view statistics and highlights from the Custom Publications in America survey.

It’s true, I’m not a fan of the term “content marketing” and would never apply that term to the work I do. That said, I really like some people who are evangelizing the use of the term “content marketing” who have honored this blog with a high ranking on a new list of bloggers who write about what they believe the term describes (more on that in a minute).

So since I’m an accidental (but appreciative) “content marketing” blogger, I’d like to use this new authority to explain fully why I don’t like or use the term “content marketing” except when a potential client is using it to describe something they’d like to hire my firm to do. (The same is true for “Web 2.0″ or any other term I may accidentally be associated with.)

See, I have a problem with the word content when used to describe what I create. I believe using the word “content” voluntarily to describe what I do insults the talent, skill, creativity and craft that goes into the media my colleagues and I create and manage in collaboration with our clients. I believe the term “content marketing” makes it sound like I’m marketing a service to shovel out some commodity created primarily to fill up space or time. Creating “content” is not what we do. Helping tell brand stories. Adding value to products. Encouraging loyalty or involvement. Educating. Activating. Those are the things the talented individuals at our company do with and for the talented individuals who are our clients. “Generating content” is absolutely the least valuable of all the services we provide. And I say that knowing the “content” we create is consistently judged to be among the best “content” created by people at companies like ours.

Longtime readers of this blog know my go-to muse on the topic of the term “content” is the philosopher Doc Searls who summarizes everything I believe when he says (and I’m leaving it precisely in his vernacular), “Stop calling everything ‘content.’ It’s a bullshit word that the dot-commers started using back in the ’90s as a wrapper for everything that could be digitized and put online. It’s handy, but it masks and insults the true nature of writing, journalism, photography, and the rest of what we still, blessedly (if adjectivally) call ‘editorial.’ Your job is journalism, not container cargo.”

End of rant.

I need to be very clear: I have nothing personal against my friends and industry colleagues who want to use the term “content marketing” to describe a business category. I don’t use the term — but I’m not leading any faction that’s “anti-” anything. I’m for whatever anyone can do to let marketers know there are companies out there who can help them create and manage media used in building brands and creating communities. And I’m honored that my weblog is ranked #13 on the new Junta 42 Top Content Marketing Blogs. And I’m (big surprise here) enough of a self-promoter to encourage people to go there and “vote” (hitch) this blog up the list. And I’m also enough of a search-engine geek to know that if the marketplace wants to call the business I’m in “content marketing,” then I’m not going to try to hide from the term when potential clients are searching for it. So, “content marketing” searchers, head right over to Hammock.com if you’re looking for a company that can help you solve any editorial or graphic design or video or online content marketing needs you may have. Anything not involving container cargo ship content, in other words.

Oh, and another thing: if you haven’t fallen asleep yet, you must actually be interested in “content marketing” (or custom media, customer media, custom publishing, customer media, conversational media, conversation marketing, etc.) so let me also point you to a new weblog on Hammock.com called Custom Media Craft. It’s tightly focused on the “crafts” used in our development and management of brand story telling. Oh, wait. Another term for another post.

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