Have you ever wished you could see a year into the future?

I can’t think of any superpower that would be more useful for content marketers than to have a sneak preview of all the important developments, trends, technologies, and key disruptors that will impact our strategic and creative decisions over the next 12 months. (Although the ability to fly might be nice as well – it would sure cut down on all my business travel time and stress!)

With the speed of big shifts happening across our industry lately – businesses merging, algorithms shifting, new tech capabilities emerging, audiences growing ever more fragmented and distracted, and the like – it’s hard enough for practitioners to keep up with what’s happening now, let alone keep our eyes firmly fixed on the horizon.

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After I interviewed Tina Fey at Content Marketing World, several people asked if she was as nice in person as she seemed on stage.

Their inquiries called to mind something my colleague Robert Rose raised on the same stage at the beginning of Content Marketing World.

“Trust is the new player … We have the power to shape beliefs,” he said. “(Content marketing) is our opportunity … to become a or the trusted source of interesting things.”

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“What’s next for content marketing?” As modern marketing practitioners, no matter how focused we are on today’s pressing challenges and opportunities, we can’t help but keep an eye on what the future might bring.

The dynamic nature of the digital industry means we can never let ourselves get too comfortable or too complacent when it comes to creating meaningful content experiences. Consumer trends, behaviors, and informational needs are always shifting. Our role isn’t just to build strong, trusting customer relationships now but to serve as true agents of change – enabling our brands, our strategies, and our stories to evolve along with them.

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Leadership. It’s a lively mix of team building, innovation, excellence, humility, and results. These are just a few of the characteristics we look for when selecting the finalists for CMI’s Content Marketer of the Year award. As we begin to unveil our 2018 finalists in the coming weeks, we want to give you a closer look at last year’s honoree.

Paolo Mottola, managing editor at REI Co-op and the 2017 Content Marketer of the Year, has demonstrated again and again how content can drive more than interest and engagement – it can drive action.

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What’s your story? It’s a common question when you’re first getting to know someone. It begs for details about your past, your career, your family, your hobbies. You probably never hear anyone reply: “I studied content marketing as an undergraduate and earned a Ph.D. in creating great customer experiences.”

Those degrees don’t exist, of course. But that’s OK. Great storytellers come from all sorts of places. And they’re telling stories in so many new ways that each day seems to add proof to Daniel Pink’s dramatic 2006 assertion:Continue Reading

Next week I’ll join my counterparts from around the world in Berlin to talk about live event experiences. It’s an annual gathering where we can share ideas, successes, and challenges, and learn to better understand each other’s businesses. For many, creating pre-event content to build excitement (and maybe a bit of FOMO [fear of missing out]) for our events is a hot topic.

Regardless of your industry or region of the world, pre-event content is an important element for delivering on an amazing event experience.
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I’ll get back to the white squirrel in a minute …

We hear from content creators all the time about the struggle to be creative day in and day out. We understand. The struggle is real. So are the excuses:

• My company sells boring products.
• My budget is starving.
• I have writer’s block.
• My legal team has rules, rules, and more rules.

But creativity is critical when it comes to standing out among the screaming noise that distracts your audience daily. There’s hope. And there are tactics you can use to inject more creativity into your content marketing efforts.

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At CMI, we’ve always taken our mission of advancing the practice of content marketing seriously. And one of the best methods we know of when it comes to sharpening our skills and expanding our vision of what’s possible is to follow the examples set by some of the industry’s best and brightest practitioners. 

I’m sure you follow the advice of many of the well-known industry pros who graciously share their insights in our blog posts, at Content Marketing World sessions, and throughout our social media forums. But today, I am proud to introduce you to a new batch of experts to keep an eye on: the winners and finalists from this year’s Content Marketing Awards.

For the 13^th year, the awards program recognizes the remarkable accomplishments of content marketers in categories that span strategy, distribution, design, and editorial. In all, 96 winners were selected this year from a field of over 1,000 submissions.

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