Rebecca Lieb says, “How many major brands want to create their content marketing in-house? One hundred percent.  That isn’t a made-up statistic. This was an actual finding a couple of years ago when I was conducting content marketing research, interviewing senior executives from over 50 brands such as Nestlé, GE, Adobe, IBM and Coca-Cola. The next finding was even more interesting. We asked these brands what type of agency they were likely to select for content creation: an ad agency, PR agency, social media agency, or one of the much smaller breed of storytelling agency (e.g., Story... [...]

Jeff Rajeck says, “There’s more to B2B content marketing than just publishing a white paper and watching the sales leads roll in.   At Econsultancy’s recent Digital Outlook 2015 event in Singapore two industry experts – Anol Bhattacharya, CEO of GetIT Comms and Vaasu S. Gavarasana, Head of Digital Marketing at AXA – offered some great insight into how B2B companies can improve their content marketing. Content is the linchpin The first key point that both Anol and Vaasu brought up is that content is the linchpin of B2B marketing. That is, if you are going to use marketing... [...]

HubSpot team says, “Content marketing is booming — many businesses are seeing great ROI from capitalizing on content. But like any other marketing trend, what works best is constantly evolving. To find out where you should next put your efforts, we asked 10 successful entrepreneurs what content marketing trends they were most excited about and why. 1) Branded Content Sketch Videos I really admire companies like Funny or Die and JASH who have transitioned into creating comedy sketch videos for branded content. Companies like Captain Morgan are coming up with some truly creative stuff... [...]

Aubrae Wagner says, “Large content projects involve lots of content creation, be that content in the form of words, images, or videos in a relatively short time. Is such a project on your road map, but you’re not sure where to get started? Or maybe you work in a business that produces only small amounts of content, but you’ve always wondered what goes into erecting the girders of large content production projects. I’ve worked on my share of large-scale projects. Think writing 1.6 million words in 12 weeks, auditing 3,000 URLs in 50 days, and updating 910 hotel websites weekly. It’s... [...]

George Stenitzer says, “As CMI research shows, marketers with a documented content marketing strategy are more effective than those who don’t have a written strategy. Yet, only 27% of B2C and 48% of B2B marketers have developed a plan. If you lack a written strategy, a one-page plan is a great place to begin. If you have a detailed strategy but struggle to gain traction, boiling it down to one page will make it easier. A one-page strategy can help you: Crystalize your content marketing strategy Gain stronger buy-in more quickly from executives or clients Keep content producers strategically... [...]

Gal Rimon says, “When the gameffective team and I decided to get serious about content marketing back in June of 2014, we treaded carefully at first. The return on an investment of creativity and content creation was still somewhat of a mystery to us at that point. It was something people spoke about in guest posts, but like any team trying a new business approach, we were a little hesitant to implement it ourselves. Our industry is enterprise gamification, which is exceptionally noisy in terms of marketing fluff. I must admit I was skeptical that content marketing was the best way... [...]

Ema Snider says, “If I offered you a sandwich right after you ate lunch, you’re probably going to refuse it (no matter how scrumptious it may look). But if I offered you the same sandwich when your stomach was audibly grumbling, you’d immediately snatch it from my hands and gobble it down. Timing is everything in most things in life. This goes for eating, as well as selling. If you contact a prospect right after they spend a hefty sum of money on a competitive product, they’re not going to bite (pun intended). However, if you get wind that they’re in the market for... [...]

Verónica Maria Jarski says, “Is your content focusing strictly on pushing sales? It’s not 2004! Today’s savvy customers expect more from content. Here’s a look at some content-creation tips from a Captora infographic. “Spend time learning about your customers, and give them content that resonates,” suggests Captora. Despite the importance of listening, content marketing’s primary focus (47%) is to create content for websites, social media, advertising, and print publications. Communicating regularly with customers and commercial contacts ranks low (5%)... [...]

Baer says, “Every time I publish a blog post, dozens of people tweet it instantly using some sort of automation protocol. It is gratifying to be so trusted as an information provider that this group believes it is in their best interests to automatically redistribute what I write. But I also find it frightening, and it’s not something I would ever do myself. While I certainly try to create content that passes the Mom Test every time I open the laptop to write, I know that some content is better than other content, the same way that not every batch of pulled pork is your tastiest, and not every... [...]

Ema Snider says, “Marketers are well aware of the power of content to attract and nurture leads. But at some point, leads get passed on to Sales, and salespeople are generally not as “hip” to the content movement as their colleagues in marketing. That is, until now. Whereas marketers are usually content creators, socially savvy reps are becoming adept content curators, finding and sharing internally- and externally-sourced collateral that is interesting and relevant to prospects. Some are even taking to LinkedIn Pulse or personal blogs, writing original articles to boost their... [...]