Has Content Marketing Forgotten the Reader?
After seeing yet another LinkedIn post about how to rank on Google in 2026, alongside endless AEO and GEO hacks, I’ve been thinking about how much of the conversation around content marketing focuses on what we want content to do.
We want words to rank, convert, appear in AI search results, generate leads and prove their ROI, which is all totally understandable because businesses aren’t investing in content purely for the joy of filling up their blog.
I’m no luddite, though. As a freelance content writer, these are things I think about too, and I wouldn’t be particularly useful to my clients if I didn’t. But sometimes I wonder whether, somewhere among all the optimisation and hacks, we’ve lost sight of the other person involved. The humble user who’s actually expected to read it.
We spend a lot of time thinking about what content should achieve, heck, sometimes we expect it to perform miracles. Yet perhaps we should spend more time asking why anyone should care in the first place…
All Content Has Two Audiences
The slightly awkward thing about content marketing is that it has two audiences whose interests don’t always perfectly align. This can be pared down to the business vs the reader.
The business wants visibility, leads and ultimately some kind of valuable return, while the reader wants an answer, an opinion, help making a decision or maybe even five minutes of entertainment—something interesting enough to justify their time!
Good content has to find the overlap. And it is possible, just not by crunching out a thin SEO blog or pasting an AI response without reading it through.
Interestingly, Orbit Media’s 2026 blogging research found that just 13.9% of surveyed marketers reported strong results from their blogs, the lowest figure in its 12 years of research. Yet the same study found that practices including original research, expert collaboration, keyword research and human editing were associated with stronger results.
Perhaps content creation is still worth it, then, but simply hitting the keyboard and creating more of it isn’t the answer. So, content farms, it’s time to hit the brakes. Specialised blogs with genuine research, expertise and, gasp, opinions are the better strategy if you want to please both audiences. This is called information gain, and I’ve covered it in a previous blog!
When Did Optimisation Become the Point?
As a freelance writer, I’ve written dozens of blogs and, in some cases, I’d say it’s surprisingly easy to focus on best practices, or whatever content ‘hack’ is popular at the time, rather than actually entertaining or educating the reader.
For example, I’ve spent hours fitting in ‘critical’ keywords, which can mean valuable information gets cut when you’re working with a harsh word count. In my opinion, a few blogs have emerged weaker (and sometimes misleading) because core ideas have been whittled down in favour of fitting in a list of keywords.
‘Keywords are needed to be found!’ I hear you say. And yes, this is true.
But I return with another question: ‘If your content is found but abandoned within seconds, will anyone share or remember it?’
SEO keywords have their place. Just not at the cost of the actual message.
AI has made the question of optimisation even more relevant because it has made publishing something vaguely competent incredibly easy. In 2025, SEMRush found that ChatGPT now has 700 million weekly active users, and this has only grown since. How many would you guess are creating blogs or landing pages and not giving them a proper edit? (Yes, I am a writer, and with that, I am still frustrated with low-quality AI content!)
However, I don’t believe this means AI will replace content creators, but it does mean writers and marketing teams need to give readers a reason to trust and choose what they’re reading. For me, that means:
- Understand who you’re actually writing for.
- Research rather than regurgitate.
- Include genuine expertise and experience where possible.
- Answer the question without burying it beneath 1,500 unnecessary words.
- Remember there’s a person on the other side of the screen.
So What Are We Giving the Reader?
SEO, conversion rates and content performance aren’t the enemy here, and neither is AI. The problem comes when optimising the structure and measurement of content becomes more important than whether the thing itself deserved anyone’s attention.
We’re asking readers for their attention, trust and sometimes eventually their money, so there needs to be something on their side of the exchange too. Don’t think your audience is too stupid to work out that deal.
I’m not suggesting we stop measuring content performance or thinking about SEO and business objectives. I’d probably be talking myself out of a job if I did. I just think those questions should come after a much simpler one, and one that’s surprisingly easy to overlook when you’re buried in keywords and KPIs: Why should anyone care?
Contact me to see how I can help with your content.
