Content Marketing Today

5 Fantastic Articles from Q3 2008

According to Google Analytics, these are the 5 Most Popular ContentMarketingToday.com Stories from July-September

1. The Secret to Online Marketing in the 21st Century : It’s the Content, Stupid!

Billboard marketing is fine on Route 66, but it’s all wrong on the information superhighway

Your job as a marketer is to make it easy for your buyers to buy from you. But making it easy for them may be hard for you, unless you can execute an effective content marketing strategy.

Content marketing is the art of understanding exactly what buyers need to know and delivering it to them in a relevant and compelling way.  This extends way beyond product information into the realm of best practices, case studies, success stories, and more.

Click here to read the entire story

2. Authenticity at Starbucks: Coffee and People, Yes. The Corporation, No!

Bureaucrats are bouncing baristas, as they move to shut down 600 Starbucks stores.

It may not be the same everywhere, but in our Southwest corner of Florida, Starbucks is shutting down nine of their stores.  This is likely to have an impact on their local reputation that may well be replicated around the country.

As far as I’m concerned, the Starbucks experience is as much about the people who look after you as it is about the coffee.  They do a brilliant job of hiring so that even though they don’t pay gigantic wages, they manage to staff every store with a set of employees who care about what they do and about the needs of their customers.  Those employees are the all-important people component of their content marketing.

Click here to read the entire story.

3. When You Are the Brand, Content Marketing Is Crucial

Shama Hyder proves how powerful a website and blog can be for an entrepreneur.

Shama is an online marketing expert.  How do I know this without having met her?  Because I have visited her website, “AftertheLaunch.com,” read her blog, and downloaded her e-book, “Online Marketing Plan.” There is so much great stuff inside this e-book that you’ll be amazed she’s not charging big bucks for you to buy it.

How did I learn about her in the first place?  Because she wrote a great comment on one of my blog posts.  That prompted me to visit her website where I discovered all the terrific stuff she’s doing.

In other words, she is walking the content marketing walk.

Click here to read the entire story.

4. Chris Griffith Proves a Blog with Personality Makes for Great Content Marketing

Put aside your preconceptions about real estate agents for this Bonita Springs blogger

I’ve never met Chris but after spending some time with her blog and with her content-rich website I would look forward to the pleasure.

We’ve all had unfortunate experiences with driven, single-minded real estate agents who will do anything for a sale.  I’m sure Chris is ambitious and successful but based on a reading of her online content she conveys the impression of being smart, knowledgeable, funny, and one-of-a-kind.

She does it all with a terrific content marketing strategy.

Click here to read the entire story.

5. Finally, a Great Way to Evaluate Your Website–and Your Competitors’!

Websitegrader.com from HubSpot might make you humble, but it will also make you a lot smarter about how you present yourself on the web.

Since I’m in the content marketing business, I spent a lot of time looking at websites to assess what kind of job they do in presenting content that is relevant and valuable for their likely target customers.  Of course, the success of a website depends both on the quality of content and on the quality of its visitor friendly design.  Moreover, it’s important that visitors can find it in the first place. 

Now, a great new tool, websitegrader.com, delivers a meaningful score from zero to 100 –with 100 being perfect–for the marketing effectiveness any website on the net.

Click here to read the entire article.