Though it’s said you can’t judge a book by its cover, you can decide if you want to read it – especially if the book we’re talking about is a magazine. Think about it. Given the choice, if you’re waiting at the doctor’s office with nothing to do, and you see two health magazines on the table in front...

How important is video to your content marketing strategy? If you guessed “Very,” then you are correct! (*Ding ding ding* We have a winner!) Video has increasingly become a mainstay medium for distribution and consumption of content online, and it continues to grow in popularity, scope,...

Creating good content is hard work. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be. With a bit of effort, you will likely find that plenty of valuable content already exists within your own organization–you just need to train your eyes to see it.  Continue reading

There’s plenty of discussion about the lack of alignment between sales and marketing. But less is said about the smaller misalignments that threaten to derail content-development projects – or at the very least, greatly minimize the ultimate impact of content assets such as white papers and eBooks....

Below is the presentation I gave at the Web Content 2010 conference, the leading US conference covering the art and discipline of content strategy. First, how do we develop a higher purpose for our company? Our brand purpose should: be elegantly simple be crystal clear be innately inspirational have...

What’s the first step to becoming a content marketer? You need to think like one. Sounds basic, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. Content marketing can’t thrive in some environments While having a content marketing mindset may sound simple in theory, I regularly meet sophisticated...

Like it or not, the ranks of traditional print journalists are shrinking at an astounding rate. The Pew-funded State of the News Media report for 2010 reveals that “roughly a third of the newsroom jobs in American newspapers in 2001 are now gone.” That’s a staggering figure. For business journalists,...

In last week’s post, I walked you through how to map your content to your buyer personas and sales funnel. By having this information, you can start to see where your gaps in content are. So, what’s next? You need to fill in the gaps and put a plan in place to measure what is and isn’t...

The recent Business Marketing Association conference in Chicago was focused on engagement.  The leading marketers from around the world came together to talk about it…and how engagement is the key to success for your brand and your customers. The overwhelming takeaway was this…while customer...

You probably think of Thomas Edison as a great innovator, but did you know he was also a brilliant marketer? He foresaw the creation and evolution of markets, and he worked passionately to bring his beliefs to life. While Edison didn’t use content marketing as we know it today to spread his ideas, there...

How is writing for your business blog different from any other business marketing content? In general, the goal of a business blog is to provide relevant, useful information to your targeted audience. By doing so, you create a community of loyal readers and engage their interest in your business. A few...

If you’re a B2B marketer you’ve inevitably heard sales say things like this: “Yeah, we’re getting leads from all that content you guys in marketing are writing – but they’re all tire kickers.” Or (my favorite): “We don’t need more leads. . . we need better leads.”  What now? You want to be...