One of the most exciting characteristics of content marketing strategy is also one of its biggest challenges: It’s always evolving, and often at breakneck speed. New platforms and channels launch practically every day. New data produces new insights, which in turn spur the development of new tools and technologies for more effective content creation and delivery.Continue Reading

We get it — you’re overworked. There are three new projects on your desk that have to be done RIGHT NOW. Your department is a few Tweets short of weekly mandates, and everyone else is on vacation. The CEO wants his own blog, but he can barely type the word “cat”.  And every time your boss needs something that involves writing — an email to the team, her quarterly report presentation to the C-Suite, a response to a negative Facebook comment, etc. — she turns to you, the content marketing person because, hey, “You’re just better at words than I am” — even if the task is nowhere near the job you were hired to do.Continue Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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