Content Marketing Today

And the experts like it.  They really, really like it.

Yes, it's true. Get Content. Get Customers. has completed its surprisingly long gestation period.  Joe and I are very proud parents.  We just hope that everyone else thinks our baby is as beautiful as we do.

Actually, we're genuinely encouraged because some very smart marketing and publishing experts have read the prerelease version of the book and they have been pretty complimentary about what we had to say.  This is encouraging, because when you're writing a book, you are totally immersed in the project and in what you are attempting to communicate. So, it is difficult to be objective about your literary bundle of joy.

Here are the mini-reviews that tell us that we are very much on the right track in evangelizing the need to develop and deploy content marketing strategies pervasively. Once again, Joe and I want to express our thanks to each of the marketing experts who invested a significant chunk of their valuable time to read and comment on Get Content. Get Customers.

You may be surprised at how willing they are to help you.

Despite the troubles many media companies are experiencing, their best publications can still put your advertising message in front of your buyers.  For many small business marketers, traditional advertising should still play a role in an overall content marketing strategy.  But, like many of your peers,you will be devoting more and more financial resources to content marketing in the months and years to come. 

To succeed as a content marketer, you will need to learn fundamental publishing skills in order to communicate effectively with your customers.

This is important in the analog universe, but it is vital in the digital universe.

What's the difference between 2-D marketing and 3-D marketing you might ask? Plenty!

Think of all the junk mail you receive at home or at the office.  Tons of envelopes and a few postcards.  Virtually everything but the bills will be tossed--and much of that without anyone looking at the individual pieces. 

But what if you receive a well-designed magazine that clearly matches your interests, even if you haven't requested it?  What's the likelihood that you will spend at least a few minutes leafing through the magazine.  Thus, the 3-D marketer will have made a memorable and positive impact on you and/or your business. The 2-D marketer will wind up in the wastebasket.

My friend, colleague, and co-author, Joe Pulizzi, recently wrote a great post about achieving the impossible. 

That is, he reveals the 10 secrets to writing a book when you already have a full-time job.  Well, perhaps more than a full-time job since we are both entrepreneurs in the demanding early stages of growing our businesses.

He was inspired by the arrival of the proof copy of our hardcover book.  That was a wonderful moment for both of us. It said that no matter what, we've done something amazing.  We've written a book. 

Here are my three favorite of his 10 secrets with my take on what he wrote:

Don't get me wrong.  Public relations is still a critical component to any marketing strategy for companies of all sizes. 

Nonetheless, I am convinced that we need to turn our notions of public relations upside down so that it functions within a content marketing context.

I was inspired to think again about the transformation of public relations by a recent post from David Meerman Scott in his WebInkNow.com blog.  He was sharing some top of mind ideas relating to successful public relations strategies for small businesses.  Here are his top two out of ten:

Our dog has always been full of surprises but her latest achievement topped everything that went before.

When our dog, Mia, learned that I was co-writing a book on content marketing, she apparently decided to learn how to read.  You may be skeptical, but I think this picture tells the story.  And, we all know that pictures never lie.

Even though she's a very smart dog (so smart, in fact, that she has learned to hide rawhide bones so that my wife and I could fetch them for her), we were astonished to come home yesterday to find that she was working her way through, Get Content. Get Customers.  Of course, it does have a lot of illustrations so maybe she was looking at those, but not really reading all the words.

But, if this was a video, you might see her mouthing the words ever so slowly and carefully: T-h-i-n-k  l-i-k-e  a  p-u-b-l-i-s-h-e-r

Excellent Book Tells us Why Storytelling is So Important. 

You should apply its lessons as you invent and reinvent your content marketing strategy.

We all have heroes. Garrison Keillor, creator of the Prairie Home Companion, is one of mine. Why? He is the best storyteller on the planet. Until recently, I hadn't made the connection between what Garrison Keillor does so well and the business world we all inhabit. The Story Factor by Annette Simmons pulls it all together.

Annette is a consultant with roots in major corporations. In 1992, she attended a bucolic southern storytelling event that reshaped her thinking about making an impact within a business context. She believes that facts may be important, but they don't make the difference.

As she puts it, "People don't want more information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They want faith-faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell. It is faith that moves mountains, not fact."

Whether you have already developed and deployed a content marketing strategy or whether you are still in the planning stage, you should seriously consider how to extend the reach of your core content product.

For example, let's suppose you have decided to create a quarterly print magazine that targets an important audience segment.  You will need to spend a significant amount of time and effort in generating the content that will make this magazine relevant and valuable to its readers.  That is obviously critical.  But you can do even more.

After all, the print magazine has a finite reach.  Think beyond print.  Think beyond the magazine.  You can dramatically increase the impact of your content marketing by thoughtful repurposing of the information and resources you developed in order to create the magazine itself.

Here are 15 great ways to extend the reach of your content far beyond the circulation of that print publication.  Many of these involve little or no incremental expense while offering dramatically improved incremental impact.

A brand-new book explains why this is essential and how to make it happen.

Boring is bad in person.  Boring is worse in the traditional media.  And, boring may be worst of all in in the new social media universe.  That's a critical content marketing message in the new book, Personality Not Included, written by Ogilvy public relations executive, Rohit Bhargava.

Rohit has the double responsibility of explaining why boring is bad and personality is essential while simultaneously proving that he has a personality.  In fact, you have a pretty good idea that his personality is just a bit out there by his choice of book cover, which spotlights garishly colored plastic chickens.

Goofiness aside, at the very top of the website, he explains exactly and succinctly why the book is important, "Personality Not Included is a new marketing book for entrepreneurs, marketers and all businesses about the importance of personality and a guide on how to use it."

It's all about the return on objective, not the return on investment

We are long past the days when most companies accepted marketing as a vague concept and a mysterious practice that could not really be measured. Today, most marketers and their bosses want to prove that the dollars spent achieve a measurable return.

Typically they are trying to prove a precise ROI or return on their investment dollars.  Unfortunately, that is usually difficult because processes are not now--and perhaps never will be--in-place to connect dollars spent to increased sales.  One reason for failure is that specific, achievable objectives are not established at the beginning of the marketing program.

That's where ROO comes in.  ROO means return on objective.  This is a more realistic way to measure the success of marketing program, but it does require that marketers establish specific objectives from the get go.  Here is why ROO is better than ROI at measuring what you get from your marketing.