Content Marketing Today

  It’s been a very good year for content marketing. In fact, visitors searching our site for the phrase “content marketing” increased by 85% in 2009 over 2008.

Social media certainly loomed larger in the past 12 months but interest in content marketing strategy accounted for the majority of the most popular posts.

Here is the Cliff’s Notes bullet point version with more detail and links to the full articles following:

• How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing
• 5 Reasons an eBook Should be a Core Component of Your Content Marketing Strategy
• 5 Twitter Tips to Strengthen Your Content Marketing Strategy
• Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!
• Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy
• 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
• Why Being Visual Can Bring Beautiful Business Results
• 6 Reasons to Embrace Social Media Today
• Top 10 Lessons Small Businesses Can Takeaway from Smart Content Marketers
• 6 Secrets to Making Online Video Work for Small Business

A more detailed look at the top 10 with links to each complete article is just below.  Kick back and enjoy.

Joe Pulizzi’s 7th Installment Reviews Record 300 Blogs to Select Content Marketing Thought Leaders

We are delighted to be part of the content marketing blog elite once again. In fact, we are even happier to have jumped up 4 notches from #13 to #9.

The number of blogs reviewed by the Junta42 team has grown as dramatically as the move toward adoption of content marketing strategies among companies of all sizes.  They began with a list of over 300 blogs through nominations and known content marketing-related blogs (the initial 2007 rankings contained only 81 blogs).

Integrate your online and in person efforts by learning from Truebridge's work in the banking industry.

Content marketing works by providing your best customers vital information that helps them be more successful or to live better lives. As a stand-alone effort, content marketing is powerful. What's even better is to integrate your online efforts with your team’s one-on-one work with current and future customers.

As with so much of marketing, this is a lot easier to say than to do. In a world of limited resources, generating great content poses challenges, particularly for smaller organizations. Knowing exactly what to say and how to say it rarely comes naturally to the folks who are running small companies.

Within the financial world, marketers have even greater challenges because they must comply with stringent regulations that restrict how and what they communicate to their prospects and customers.

Banks face a related challenge within their branches where they would like to do a lot more cross-selling of services to their current customers. Cross-selling can be difficult because today's customers do not want to be aggressively sold and because branch employees typically lack sophisticated selling skills.

That’s where Truebridge’s unique approach comes into play.

This Young Neighbor Understands Target Marketing Perfectly

We have just moved into a great new neighborhood with plenty of energetic young kids. While I was out walking our dog, Mia, I was delighted to discover that we have a young marketing-savvy entrepreneur in our midst.  This smart young person has launched a dog sitting service and has figured out how to target that service perfectly to prime prospects.