Industry conferences are among the most informative, engaging, and entertaining of all business-related experiences. But you will certainly miss out on all the valuable learning and networking opportunities they offer if you have trouble finding the venue, can’t keep up with trending discussion topics, or get overly stressed about the work that’s piling up on your desk while you are away.Continue Reading
Author: Jodi Harris
Jodi Harris is director of content strategy at Informa Connect. She describes her role as a combination of strategic alchemist, process architect, and creative explorer. Jodi previously served as director of editorial content at Content Marketing Institute and spent over a decade developing and managing content initiatives for clients in the entertainment, CPG, health care, technology, and biotech industries, as well as agencies and media brands. Follow her on Twitter at @Joderama.
By jodimedia published
July 29, 2012
Survival Guide: The Essential Tools for Attending Industry Events (like Content Marketing World)
By jodimedia published
July 20, 2012
What Content-Related Tools Do You Use that You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without?
While content marketing, as a discipline, truly began long before the advent of digital publishing technology and social media, the tools we have at our disposal today have provided us with content options that are virtually as unlimited as our imaginations.
So what tools do the experts consider essential to their processes for strategic content planning, creation, and management? We asked a few of our Content Marketing World speakers to share a few of their top recommendations. Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
July 13, 2012
What Kinds of Brand-Related Videos Really Get You to Sit Up and Take Notice?
Whether it’s for information, instruction, or pure entertainment, it’s clear that people love to watch online video. Just how popular is the format? Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube alone, and that barely scratches the surface when you consider all of its competitors — not to mention that videos are hosted on just about every other website created today. But with the staggering amounts of content being uploaded to the web, by both brands and consumers, it’s hard to get your video to stand apart from the crowd — and even harder to get it to make a real impact on your customers.
While there are no magic formulas for success, our Content Marketing World speakers have some great advice to share on how to create branded videos that consumers will find authentic, engaging, and useful.Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
June 28, 2012
A Decision-Maker’s Guide to Making Smart Content Marketing Technology Choices
In the world of content marketing, technology helps us make so many of our day-to-day decisions that it’s hard to imagine how we could ever do our jobs without it.
Need information on your customers for a project? There’s a survey for that. Need to share that information with peers and colleagues and gather their feedback? Social media platforms have you covered. Need a sugar fix to fuel your late-afternoon content brainstorm? Just grab your phone, tap around a bit, and you can probably have that treat on your desk in no time at all.
But there are some business decisions that are just too important; too dependent on personalized information; too central to your enterprise-wide operations to leave up to computer code and public opinion.Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
June 15, 2012
How to Measure the Success of Content Marketing
Ask content marketers to discuss the benefits of their trade and you will, no doubt, be regaled with facts, statistics, and examples that clearly demonstrate how successful a discipline it can be. But ask him or her to quantify that success with a number, and the answers aren’t always as cut and dried.Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
June 8, 2012
Learn The Mistakes Brands Are Making With Content Marketing… So You Don’t Repeat Them
With a discipline as (relatively) young as content marketing, brands are bound to encounter some learning curves on the path to success. Yes, it’s true that more and more organizations are recognizing the need to transition from a mindset of “always sell” to one that focuses on “having a story to tell.” But frequently, they lack a clear understanding of just what that journey entails — the purposes, processes, and procedures involved in producing great content — causing even the most forward-thinking and nimble of companies to trip over itself in the race to execute a content program.Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
May 25, 2012
How To Explain Content Marketing To The C-Suite
Chances are the CEO, CMO, and other executives in your organization know at least a little something about how to deliver a message to customers — that’s why they make the big bucks, right?
But the marketing game is always evolving, and now that content marketing has emerged as one of the most vital components of any marketing plan, what they know about our discipline may not have kept up with the times.Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
May 21, 2012
The 6 Key Metrics You Need to Maximize Webinar Opportunities
The webinar is one of the most powerful formats in the content marketer’s arsenal, and it’s used by 46 percent of B2B marketers (according to the 2012 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends research). Not only does it give businesses an opportunity to speak at length about a relevant topic, but it also gives them a platform from which to share key insight that helps extend the conversation long after the event takes place.
By jodimedia published
April 25, 2012
Ideas for Kick-Starting Your Content Marketing with Video and Social Media
Video and social media have experienced tremendous growth in the last few years — in terms of technological capabilities, as well as in usage rates. For example, according to the B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends study, marketers’ use of social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn grew by up to 20 percent between 2010 and 2011. In that same time period, video usage increased from 41 percent to 52 percent among marketers.Continue Reading
By jodimedia published
April 4, 2012
The Content Match Game: Tips for Better Content Alignment Throughout the Buying Cycle
You’ve heard the mantra before: Content marketing works best when it’s delivered to the right target, at the right time, using the right message to drive interest and sales. But the key question is how do you tell if you are providing value every step of the way or are just throwing everything out there and hoping your information will reach consumers at the right moment?
Yes, content works well when it comes to driving consumer demand. And, in turn, existing demand can create an ideal opportunity to deliver valuable, informative content. Yet marketers don’t always recognize how holistically these two marketing functions are linked to each other and to the various stages in the customer’s buying process — an oversight that needlessly complicates the job of any marketer.
