When did you last stop to ask yourself: Why do we do content marketing?

If you ask me, the reasons abound:

• Content helps you connect with each customer, win their trust, and eventually build and maintain a relationship with them.
• Content lets you explain the benefits of your product or service offerings (and eventually sell them) to the market.
• Content helps you differentiate yourself from the competition.
• Good content demonstrates the authority of your brand in your niche, while building a strong reputation and recognition.
• An effective content marketing strategy delivers the best business results.

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Every person has a story to tell. And if you are a smart content marketer, you know that every employee has a story that can sell your brand.

As I write this, I think about the picture of Sir Richard Branson posing with an employee caught sleeping on the job. While other leaders would have been miffed or looked away, the flamboyant Virgin boss wove a wonderful story, keeping all of his active as well as not-so-active employees in the spotlight.

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You probably realize your newsletter ain’t the beans. You can’t sprout the open rate overnight. However, if you lay the groundwork with targeted and well-researched strategies, your newsletter will grow uncannily fast just like bamboo shoots.

Let me ask – how do you measure the success of your newsletter? There are two easy ways:

1. See how many people open it (and therefore, hopefully, read it).
2. See how many people click the links within.

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Editor’s note: Confusion still exists about how content and content marketing differ. It isn’t about the definition, but the difference between creating content and practicing content marketing. This post is updated to provide you with a better understanding and to be shared with your teams and executives. 

An e-book, a webinar, and a white paper are not content marketing. Ads are not content marketing. Social media posts are not content marketing. Marketing with content is not the same thing as content marketing.

But what is the difference between content and content marketing? The answer is the publisher-like destination and the regular frequency of quality content that you use to attract and build an audience. You don’t own the audience on social platforms. And one e-book is not consistent enough to build the trust that audiences today are expecting.

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Editor’s note: Given the continued importance of ROI in content marketing, we bring back this post with a few updates on the subject.

Questions about content marketing ROI are probably the ones I hear most from marketers who are struggling to build the business case and demonstrate content marketing results.

We know our customers are tuning out advertising. And we know that as consumers we are all consuming more information online. We are all looking to get informed and we are looking to be entertained.

We don’t care where the content comes from. But we aren’t sitting around waiting for it. And we won’t go too far to find it.

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Content is the life force of marketing today. Every business is an information business first; its product comes second. In this age, content is what enables marketers to build, connect, and interact with customers at every touchpoint in the buyer’s journey.

Newsletters, events, and courses are all great sources that content strategists, marketers, and consultants can leverage to advance the practice of content marketing. But one of the best ways to achieve the goals of content marketing – to reach, engage and convert new customers to your business – is to document your content marketing strategy with a hands-on, insightful content marketing workshop.

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Editor’s note: There continue to be a lot of questions about how content and content marketing differ. This post shares an insightful answer that resonates with marketers, so we are bringing it back. 

What is the difference between content and content marketing? The answer is the destination you will use to attract and build an audience.

Content marketing is about attracting an audience to an experience (or “destination”) that you own, build, and optimize to achieve your marketing objectives.Continue Reading

Digital, social, and mobile technologies have dramatically changed the world we live in. And no function has been more disrupted than marketing. Executives won’t fund marketing if it doesn’t demonstrate results. That’s why marketing ROI – including content marketing ROI — is one of the top challenges for CMOs and marketers.

But before we dig in to walk you through the formula to do this, here’s a secret: You need to build a content marketing destination, such as a blog or a content hub. It is easier to measure the value of an owned platform  relative to any other form of marketing.Continue Reading