Executives and technical experts can hold the keys to uniquely powerful stories. But wrangling these apex collaborators is a challenge. Follow this advice to extract the wisdom from their brains and get it into your content.

Sarah Mitchell had analyzed other people’s research. But when she took on the challenge of original research for her company, she discovered it was a lot harder than she anticipated. Now, she shares eight lessons she learned.

How you measure the past influences how you shape the future. Yet some commonly used metrics give the illusion of 24-karat success when they’re not much more than fool’s gold. Do you know what content marketing success really looks like?

Could podcasting be the next big thing? With only 3% using podcasts, it’s an underused tactic that should appeal to marketers who target a more educated and higher-household-income audience. Here’s how to get in front of the trend.

Many brands build communities and acquire fans, but precious few turn casual fans into passionate followers through their marketing strategy. One notable exception is Black Milk, a quirky Australian fashion brand. Find out how Black Milk uses brand storytelling to chart the future of retail, social cliques, and the so-called "third shelf."

There's tremendous opportunity for brands to reach consumers who used to be unreachable because of differences in geography and language, but there's more to it than just having your content translated. Find out how to prepare your content marketing to reach a global audience.

Each year, CMI honors the individual content marketers who inspire us all to achieve more. Find out more about 7 inspiring industry leaders named for 2013. Also, join us at Content Marketing World in September, when one of these notable content experts will be named Content Marketer of the Year.

Author Sarah Mitchell shares lessons from her big fat content marketing project, including her do-it-or-die essentials for a large-scale content marketing kick-off.

We’ve all had a giggle over a bad translation. Examples of unintentionally funny gaffes on assembly instructions and product descriptions abound on the Internet. But it’s not funny when it happens to you. What can you do? As the old saying goes, the devil is in the detail. With that in mind, here is the checklist I use when localizing content. Make sure each of these points is checked off your list before you launch content in a different country or geography. Paper American standard paper is 8 ½ x 11 inches. The rest of the world operates on an A4 paper size, 21 x 29.7 cm or, roughly, 8 ¼ x 11 ¾ inches. It’s a small difference with a huge impact. American-sized documents do not easily fit into envelopes or binders in other countries. Your documents must be resized – and possibly redesigned – to ensure they print properly in your foreign market. Hole punches America uses a standard 3-hole punch. Most other countries use a 2-hole punch and are not aligned with the American standard....

Localization is a topic frequently on my mind. As the Australian editor of the Chief Content Officer (CCO) magazine I’ve been part of a team working on the inaugural issue.  It’s been an eye-opening experience for a bunch of seasoned content professionals. The Australian and European versions of CCO are now available! Read them online and subscribe to future issues!Continue reading

Email marketing is one of the most popular and effective ways for businesses to share their content and connect with customers. Besides being relatively easy, eNewsletters provide good analytics along with a low-cost way to help you manage customer engagement. Your subscriber list is a goldmine for your business – the bigger the list, the more potential to achieve desired results. What’s more, marketers rate eNewsletters as one of the more effective content marketing tactics.Continue reading

What is the biggest problem you face in your content marketing strategy? In the B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends study published last week, 66% of respondents identified a challenge with the production of the content. Split between three areas, content marketers admitted to being worried about: Producing engaging content – 36% Producing enough content – 21% Producing a variety of content – 9% Who can’t identify with these concerns? What surprised me is that my biggest challenge wasn’t even mentioned in the study, and it’s a problem shared by all of us. People aren’t reading. Continue reading