Account-based marketing comes largely from the shortcomings of the content-driven demand-gen model. Frustrated waiting for enough content to drive enough leads for the business, brands saw ABM as a better way for outbound marketing.

Here's a follow-up to last year's post on women who rock content marketing. It's a list of 20 more women who not only produce epic content, but also live it. Follow these women to see how it's done.

Little Bird, a new start-up that is essentially a search engine for influencers, might just become a content marketer’s most powerful weapon, because it addresses the practitioner’s three most pressing needs: more content, better content, and wider distribution. Find out how it works.

Content that sells gets more funding. Content that doesn't is retired. These are the basics of product marketing. And here are three essential lessons content marketers can learn from their counterparts on the product side of the house.

In their rush to be measured like everyone else, content marketers are in danger of short-changing their full value. These four benefits of content marketing can bring immense value to your company and its internal communication goals.

Joe Chernov expresses his dismay with the "boy's club" culture of content marketing, namely, excluding women thought leaders and influencers, noting that it is detrimental to the content marketing industry. He then lists 20 women who rock content marketing, and invites you to add your own favorite content marketing women -- with their Twitter handle -- who rock your own content marketing world!

Content marketing is lunch pail work. It wears a blue collar and sometimes even a dirty blue collar. It’s the guy with callused hands in the boardroom. That’s because content marketing is for doers. After all, who has the time to sit around “thought leading” when there is so much coal to shovel onto the fire? Believe me. I know.  I run content marketing, and I have the blisters to prove it. Continue reading

Let’s start with a challenge: Without mentioning other colors, describe the color orange. Seriously, try it. Go on. Impossible, right? Now imagine describing not only what an infographic is but also what makes a good one. Because it’s uniquely difficult to do this in the abstract, examples are key. So let’s channel our inner Jack Klugman (Quincy, anyone?) and perform an autopsy on a recent infographic, dissecting it to see what worked, what could have been improved, and what features might have made it truly epic.

We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule. You know, the one that states 20 percent of causes are responsible for 80 percent of results. For example, 80 percent of support calls are placed by 20 percent of users; 80 percent of speeding tickets are “explained” by the same 20 percent of excuses; or its original application, 80 percent of wealth is controlled by 20 percent of the population. You get the idea. Whether you are in technology, law enforcement or economics, you aren’t immune to the 80/20 rule. Content marketers are no different. Continue reading

Fifteen minutes might just be the perfect length for a presentation. It forces the speaker to focus on the essentials, and it’s over before the audience’s minds begin to wander. When I present, How to Create Attention, Interest and Sales with Infographics at next month’s Content Marketing World, I’ll have just that: 15 minutes to help the audience better understand what is quickly becoming one of the most popular content marketing formats — the infographic.Continue reading

While driving home from a weekend getaway, my wife and I found ourselves listening to a HowStuffWorks podcast on military snipers. (Do I have a remarkable wife or what?) During the hilarious and informative lesson, the hosts described snipers as a force multiplier – that is, “an individual or small team that, through the use of special tactics, can do the damage of a much larger force.” This triggered (pun intended) a thought: Content is marketing’s force multiplier. Just as an individual sniper can take out an enemy’s weapons armory with one shot, a single piece of content also has a multiplying impact on an organization’s global marketing effort. The following  list highlights  six compounding benefits companies can enjoy from an active content marketing program. Continue reading

Last September, MarketingProfs and Junta42 teamed up to produce a report on the state of content marketing. Their research concluded that marketers’ top three content-related challenges were: Producing engaging content (36%) Producing enough content (21%) Having sufficient budget to create content (20%). There is a simple way to address all three challenges at once: Planned obsolescence.Continue reading