Content Marketing Today

Proving again that our readers like to dig into a variety of topics under the broad content marketing umbrella.

While you’re enjoying the beach or a barbecue this 4th of July weekend, take a few minutes to ponder how effective content marketing can make you independent of the old-fashioned way of doing things.

Here’s the tasty topics menu from which to choose:

• how to create effective elevator speech to drive your content marketing
• using content marketing to survive the recession
• low cost research as killer weapon
• making an eBook a core component of your content marketing strategy
• become your customers’ online content concierge
• why your blog is your most important social media tool

Read on to see the 6 most popular articles that your fellow content marketers voted for with their visits.

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Of course, I'm assuming that you already have a website and are probably doing some business blogging.  You may also do a regular eNewsletter to inform your customers and prospects about the great content you have created recently online.  Your next step is to create an e-book that targets your ideal customers.

Joe and I learned this lesson with the e-book that preceded the print version of Get Content Get Customers.  We were able to distribute our content marketing message to thousands of folks from around the world who took the time to download our e-book.  We got plenty of positive and helpful feedback.

The power of e-books hit me again while I was reading David Meerman Scott's new book, the World Wide Rave.  He wrote about an Australian company the RPO group which is a recruitment outsourcing firm.  Although David covered their website and their blog, I was particularly impressed by their e-book, 5 Secrets of Talent.  It's only 23 pages long, but conveys critical concepts clearly and compellingly. 

Their e-book works for them.  E-books can work for you as well. Here are five reasons why:

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

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. Read More

Get content. Get customers., the hardcover edition of the new book that Joe Pulizzi and I have written will be coming out on July 1, 2008. Although it runs a full 200 pages, we have been able to extract some important lessons from the companies we examined. The range of organizations that we analyzed extended from huge multibillion dollar public companies to midsize companies with a few hundred employees and even to very small single owner organizations. We know that you will want to run out and buy the book because it is chock-full of content marketing knowledge that you can put to work immediately. But for now, here are the top 10 content marketing lessons we gleaned from some brilliant content marketing practitioners. These represent the themes that we recognized again and again as we examined how organizations are putting content marketing to work. Read More

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.

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Content marketing should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. But it can be challenging to implement. Our colleague and friend, Stephanie Diamond, highlighted our B.E.S.T. approach as a way of making your implementation simpler. Learn how the B.E.S.T approach can work for you. Read More

It's great to learn that an online marketing expert like Patsi Krakoff finds our term, 'content marketing' to be an apt descriptor of the integration of multiple trends and techniques: I'll admit that the concept of Content Marketing makes sense to me. It ties together all the different kinds of content you need to publish for [...] Read More

If you or your organization has one or more areas of expertise that you'd like to share, consider producing an eBook. If you have a lot to communicate, but want to say it more colorfully than a white paper and more portably than a website, an eBook may be just the ticket. Does this sound [...] Read More