About 2,7000 years ago, people began to optimize content so it could be discovered.

How? They built libraries.

Libraries gave people an organized archive they could search for answers to their questions.

About 2,300 years ago, the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt had a famous librarian, Callimachus, one of the most renowned Greek poets and scholars.

But Callimachus’ fame didn’t come from his storytelling. No, he introduced the first topical catalog of the library’s holdings. He ostensibly built the first Google of the world.

In this month’s Marketing Makers episode, I explore the evolution of content optimization, then leap ahead to the challenges of optimizing content in 2021. Watch the full episode here, or skip ahead to the segment where I show you a content optimization model for the future that takes into account all the ways people look for information today.

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Surfers say waves travel in groups of seven. They call them a “set.” Having the patience to wait for the biggest, most powerful seventh wave is the key to a great day in the water.

In reality, there is no seventh wave. Or, more specifically, the “seventh” wave could be any wave. There are bigger waves and smaller waves, but patterns – though they exist – are elusive.

Even so, great surfers can sense when that big wave is imminent.Continue Reading

You’ve probably heard people describe marketing departments as places for trying fantastical things where no one has a bad idea, and everybody’s work gets a star and gets put up on the refrigerator.

If that was ever true, those days are over.

CEOs now see the marketing function as a driver for growth, according to an article in McKinsey. As one former CEO said, “Data has changed how the C suite is interacting with marketing. Now it’s very hard to separate company strategy from marketing strategy.”Continue Reading

I’m not a handy guy, but I know how to use a tape measure. If I use the tape measure to figure out the height of my fence, I can determine the value of my house, right?

Well, no, of course not.

Yet when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of marketing, we often make these kinds of leaps. We look at some arbitrary measurement – like page views or downloads – and try to link it to a return on investment.

In the latest episode of Marketing Makers – the series for those who make marketing work, I delve into the sometimes-mystifying process of measuring the return on investment for marketing – and, more specifically, the content that feeds the marketing machine. I walk you through the art and science of putting together all those arbitrary numbers to tell a story about helping business performance.Continue Reading

It’s been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. At 30 images per second, less than two hours of video would be worth more than all the words in the English language.

Even if that old saying isn’t literally true, video and the strategy behind it are undeniably among the most important tools in the modern marketer’s kit.

This episode of Marketing Makers – the video series for those that make marketing work – breaks down the art and science of video in your marketing mix. Explore the key concepts in this post, then watch to discover the details, including insight from video expert A. Lee Judge.Continue Reading

When you invest in content, you want the most people to see it. So you launch it where it has the best chance to be seen by the highest number of the right people in the shortest time.

Unfortunately, that means your content fights with everyone else’s for attention.

Does it make more sense to publish your content in a quiet space or try to stand out in a noisy one?

The art of deciding where to place content for the biggest impact is called media planning. And it’s at the heart of every great marketing strategy.Continue Reading

Content marketing is growing exponentially. But the advancement ladder for content practitioners is missing most of its rungs.

While many organizations consider content marketing an important, functional strategy (pardon us while we at CMI pat ourselves on the back), most have no idea how to build a career ladder for this function (and we stop patting ourselves on the back).

In most businesses I visit, I find confusion about where these content practitioners should live in the organization structure. Worse, I see a dead end for many.

To move up, talented content practitioners must move on – meaning they move out of the team and maybe away from the brand.Continue Reading

Spoiler alert to 2021: We’re not going to wake up to a “new normal” in February, March, or any time thereafter. We’re already here.

The pandemic simply accelerated the fundamental changes already underway, as the B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2021 report, produced by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, shows.

By some estimates, consumer digital behavior jumped ahead five years in just eight weeks. The events of 2020 hit the warp-speed button on the disruption scale.Continue Reading