Content Marketing Today

New British Blog Joins Content Marketing Crusade

Now we have one more reason to love England.

One of the joys of the Internet is finding and being found.  As I was reviewing inbound connections to Content Marketing Today this morning, I discovered that there is a brand-new business blog coming from the UK.  And it’s all about content marketing. 

I’m delighted that we are joining hands across the pond for yet another great battle for truth and goodness.  This time it’s all about transforming how we think about marketing– and to exhort marketers to put great content at the heart of their marketing strategy.

Pete Shemilt, sales and marketing director at the Cambridge University Press, has recently launched a blog called “Relevant and valued.” I was pleased that he had discovered Content Marketing Today and actually wrote about us in a November 16, 2007 post called, “The birth and rise of content marketing.”

Pete notes that although you can’t find the term “content marketing” in Wikipedia it’s not necessarily an old concept.  As he says:

Is content marketing a new concept?  Enlightened businesses have been practising it for years. But now the possibilities are more scaleable. The Web era demands that every business and organization needs to consider and implement a content marketing strategy as a core part of planning and delivering an integrated marketing strategy.

He offers a fairly long definition of content marketing as follows:

Content marketing is the technique of sourcing, creating and distributing relevant and valued content to attract, acquire, engage and enthuse a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer behaviour.

His last phrase is critical–”driving profitable to customer behavior.” Fundamentally that’s what content marketing is all about.  Effective content marketing will change customer behavior because your target audience begins to view you as a trusted source–first of content, then of products and services.

I love his final exhortation, “Be relevant, be valued and get your customers to act.”

Be sure to check out his website, RelevantandValued.com. He already has some great stuff on it and I’m confident there will be lots more to come.