Justin Mares says, “We all do it: spend hours thinking of topics, craft artisanal headlines, and wait for the sudden influx of new customers to flood in after reading our blog masterpieces. Unfortunately, the sudden flood rarely happens. Too often, our ideal customers don’t find the content we release on our blogs. Why? We hit “publish” and hope that people will come find us — but they don’t even know we’ve released something new. Publishing content should be like dating. Imagine you’re trying to find a girlfriend or boyfriend: Do you think you’ll find... [...]

Pete Prestipino says, “Presentation-sharing platform SlideShare is making many of its professional-level features available for free.  Starting August 20th, the popular Linkedin-owned platform began making the change for all Slidershare users to have access to premium features including analytics, profile customization and additional upload options (like video). Slideshare will be releasing one new feature every month starting in September 2014″. Slideshare Goes Free; Content Marketers Rejoice! Website Magazine  [...]

Jim Yu says, “Back in 2013, Google informed us that B2B buyers don’t contact suppliers directly until 57 percent of the purchase process was complete. That purchase process starts with search and continues with content. Fast-forward to 2014: B2Bs are embracing content as a primary form of marketing, and they’re seeing stellar results from the organic search channel. In this post, we’ll take a look at what B2Bs said at the head of the year about their content marketing, and what results B2Bs are seeing in Q3 with new research showing organic content is the B2B marketer’s greatest... [...]

Lee Odden says, “The most elusive of white rabbits in the content marketing world seems to be the question of how to best measure ROI. According to a study by CMI and MarketingProfs, over 50% of marketers are investing more budget in content marketing and the most effective marketers spend more than double than the least effective marketers. While budgets are moving in the right direction, measuring ROI still has some progress to make. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing study, less than 50% of marketers can confirm content marketing’s positive ROI“. How to Show... [...]

Kelsey Libert says, “If you’re running experiments and optimizing your presence on social media, it’s easy to get stuck in the weeds. You run a test, figure out what works, and then do more of what works. And if you do that again and again and again, you can get stuck doing the same-old-same-old optimization techniques, ignoring exciting growth opportunities right under your nose. To get out of that rut, it’s helpful to look at larger social media trends and get inspired to try new things in your social media and content strategies”. New Data: A Deep Dive Into Which... [...]

Rachel Balik says, “Content personalization is a hot topic for digital marketers these days, but many are just beginning to understand how they can actually put it into practice. Previously, a personalized website — one that displays different content or a different layout depending on who is visiting – involved quite a bit of heavy lifting. These days, new tools and technology are making it easier than for marketers to implement this kind of personalized content. However, there are still a lot of choices when it comes to the best approach. Although there’s no one-size-fits-all... [...]

Eric Enge says, “Content marketing strategies often fail and for many different reasons. My colleague Mark Traphagen and I recently invited well-respected thought leader and Moz founder Rand Fishkin to join us on a live video broadcast of The Digital Marketing Excellence Show to discuss the reasons why. What follows in today’s column is a summary of the top lessons from the show, starting with three myths”. Content Marketing: What Separates Success From Failure? Marketing Land  [...]

Emma Snider says, “Great news, marketers! A new infographic fromDocurated shows that the work you do pays off:83% of companies cite high-quality content as a top driver of winning new customers. But there’s a slight glitch in the baton handoff to Sales. Those awesome pieces you’re putting out? Reps can’t find them. According to the infographic, 58% of surveyed organizations agreed that speed of RFI and RFP responses is important to signing new contracts. But unfortunately, salespeople are slowed by disorganization: 65% said the ability to quickly find content was a major... [...]

Sharmin Kent says, “Now that the average B2B buyer is more than halfway through her purchase decision before engaging with a sales rep, it’s critical that the content propelling a prospect through the pipeline is informative and relevant. An organization’s marketing team is usually responsible for creating sales content, and communication and collaboration between the two departments can be rare. For forward-thinking organizations, however, the age-old tug of war between sales and marketing is finally coming to an end. Aligning marketing and sales goals ensures that a marketing team produces... [...]

This is a reminder for the eMarketer’s B2B Content Marketing Ad webinar on September 4. eMarketer team says, “We’ll address these key questions: Are B2B marketers too focused on leads? How can marketers achieve soft goals like branding—and measure success? Are intangibles as much a part of sales conversions as lead generation? Will budgets be cut if satisfaction doesn’t improve?“. Webinar Details Organizer:  eMarketer Key Speaker: Mike Hudson Topic: B2B Content Marketing—It’s Not Just Lead Gen Day/Date: Thursday, September 4 Time: 1.00 pm ET – Time Zone... [...]