Ann Gynn edits the CMI blog. Ann regularly combines words and strategy for B2B, B2C, and nonprofits, continuing to live up to her high school nickname, Editor Ann. Former college adjunct faculty, Ann also helps train professionals in content so they can do it themselves. Follow Ann on Twitter @anngynn or connect on LinkedIn.
Should you let content marketing “rules” rule your content marketing?
That’s a resounding no from 23 experts presenting at Content Marketing World 2020.
But they aren’t advising you to break the rules just because you can. Breaking rules successfully requires thinking and exploration. Here is their carefully considered advice on which content marketing “rules” are crying out to be broken.
What do you do when your usual business model can’t work?
These three organizations turned to content marketing.
One found a viral hit when it promoted its new business service model.
Aristotle had it right:
“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”
At least that’s what you can conclude from the advice of Content Marketing World 2020 presenters who shared things to improve the quality of your content marketing.
Are your audiences and teams seeing things?
If not, your content marketing won’t be as successful as it could be.
The CMI blog’s top five articles on visual content illustrate the value of “see-able” content, whether the viewer is a search engine, audience, or content team member. (This is the last in our summer series highlighting the top five articles based on our site categories.)
You know that billions of people use social media every day. And every day, content marketers post a deluge of content to their brands’ social channels.
Social media can do so much for brands – offer a place to distribute original content, promote published content, grow communities, provide referral traffic, attract conversions, etc. But it can’t be all that to all brands all the time.
Do you want the good news or the bad news first?
Actually, you don’t need to answer. The good news is the bad news and the bad news is the good news.
So what’s the actual news?
Live events give marketers a range of powerful opportunities to please audiences. But can the same be said for their online counterparts? See how those who have shifted to virtual events found success – and where they feel there’s room for improvement.
Like nails on a chalkboard, they elicit a bad reaction every time you read and hear them.
Unfortunately, you see and hear them a lot – that’s one of the reasons you cringe. (Me? I get so irritated that I mentally edit to get rid of the utterances.)
Every morning, you jog the same route. You’ve come to recognize the faces of your fellow runners, greeting them with a smile (pre-mask days) and now a nod (with mask).
But today is different. Every time you encounter a regular, they wish you a happy birthday.
Wait, what? How did they know it was your birthday when you only know them by sight?
Too often, when content marketers talk mistakes, they’re referring to typos, grammatical errors, and misspellings.
That narrow focus on the granular could be their biggest gaffe.
That’s what we discovered after asking ContentTECH Summit presenters for the biggest mistakes they see happening in the content creation, production, and promotion processes.
