Michele is the Content Development Director of the Content Marketing Institute and a B2B content marketing consultant who has a passion for helping companies use content to connect with their ideal buyers. You can follow her on Twitter at @michelelinn or read more of her posts on Savvy B2B Marketing.
As much as content marketing has grown in awareness and popularity over the past several years, people still have many questions and doubts about its viability as a successful discipline.
During a recent #CMWorld chat with Michael Brenner about justifying content marketing, we asked participants to share the biggest misconceptions they hear about content marketing. The ideas came flying in, so we thought we’d share — and debunk — them, to set the record straight. Continue Reading
Earlier this week, Joe released the 6th annual content marketing predictions. While it’s fun to hypothesize on what 2014 will have in store, it’s also amazing to see how much has changed across the content marketing industry in the last year. While we had dozens of savvy experts cover the gamut of the past year’s advances, nine themes seemed to have emerged to characterize the 2013 content marketing landscape.Continue Reading
Marketers are always challenged to find enough time to accomplish every task they are charged with, so outsourcing a job like content creation may seem like an obvious solution. But, is it really an easy solution, when you factor in all the requirements of quality content marketing?
According to our annual content marketing research, about 50 percent of marketers outsource some aspect of content creation, with writing and design being the top things they get help with.Continue Reading
In this year’s content marketing research, one new question we asked was whether organizations were creating more or less content, compared to a year ago — and the majority of marketers are doing just that. Does that sound intimidating? Do you feel this is a positive trend, or one that just creates greater challenges?
This debate leads off our second roundtable discussion on the results of our B2C content marketing study. But, hold tight — what we learned holds lessons for anyone who is using content marketing, including those who work in B2B and nonprofit industries. Continue Reading
LinkedIn for B2C? According to our recent B2C Content Marketing 2014: Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends, 71 percent of B2C marketers in North America are using LinkedIn (up from 51 percent last year). But, only 42 percent of users find this channel to be effective.
While it’s common to hear that B2B marketers are using LinkedIn, is it a good channel for B2C, as well? And, more importantly, how can B2C marketers who are using LinkedIn be more effective?
We set out to answer these questions, and others, in our first of three B2C research roundtables.Continue Reading
The consumer attention span is about the size of a gnat right now. We move on to the next thing super, super quickly. So it’s really important to be topical and relevant. At the same time, our industry has been going down this real-time marketing train. We’re all trying to be more and more real-time, which tends to be, in large measure, sort of chasing whatever is happening and trying to attach yourself to it, which might be topical but not relevant to your brand. So I think it’s the push-pull of, ‘How do I remain agile enough to be topical but at the same time staying relevant and true to what it is you’re trying to communicate and build for our brand?’
If you are involved in content marketing, you can probably relate to this challenge, as stated by Julie Fleischer, Director of Media and Consumer Engagement at Kraft Foods.Continue Reading
While the Content Marketing Institute team digs into our research stats each year to see what trends are characterizing the current state of B2B content marketing, we have also found that one of the best ways to advance the conversation is to look forward. Continue Reading
If you are like 69 percent of B2B content marketing professionals, you feel challenged by a lack of enough time — in fact, 30 percent of content marketers consider this to be their greatest challenge. As someone who lives and breathes in the content marketing space, I can relate to feeling overwhelmed. But is this reported time crunch a legitimate excuse for failing to realize the full potential of content, or just a way to justify a lack of optimal success?
In a continuing roundtable series focused on the newest B2B content marketing research from Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, industry experts Ardath Albee, Michael Brenner, Carla Johnson, Michael Weiss, and Todd Wheatland discuss the validity of this challenge. A huge thanks to Shiri Friedman from Brightcove for moderating this discussion. Continue Reading
Last week, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs released a new study, B2B Content Marketing: 2014 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America. Among its findings, evidence of one growing trend is clear: B2B marketers are using social media at higher rates now than ever before. On average, B2B marketers are leveraging six channels for social media content, compared to five last year.Continue Reading
Is social media a type of content or a channel? What is the future of Google+? Are companies using too many social channels or too few?
These were just a few of the questions debated during last week’s #CMWorld chat with Joe Chernov (@jchernov) and Joe Pulizzi (@joepulizzi). Read on to get the details of our discussion on these and other questions asked by CMI readers and Twitter followers. You can also view the highlights in the SlideShare below, or read the full transcript. Continue Reading
