Content Marketing Today

That is either terrific news or horrendous news for your company.

It really depends on your approach to online marketing.  I was alerted to this somewhat counterintuitive idea by a great eNewsletter from Stephanie Miller.  While she writes about e-mail marketing, the implications apply across the board in terms of how you connect with your customers online.

She quotes a study from Sirius Decisions: "Selling now takes more time and resources than ever before.  The sales cycle has become 22% longer as buyers are taking longer to consider their decisions.  Plus, buying is being managed more professionally."

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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."

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Like it or not Wikipedia has become the Encyclopaedia Britannica of the 21st century.  Although some skeptics complain about its accuracy and although there have been some abuses to this user created encyclopedia, it has proven to be an extremely useful research tool.

Whenever I'm looking for explanations of terms, concepts, and technologies so that I can  explain them to other people, I go first to Wikipedia.

Content marketing is not a term I would normally need to research since I am completely obsessed with it and think about all the time.  But, out of curiosity, I look it up periodically on Wikipedia to see if this powerful trend has been acknowledged in the virtual pages of this invaluable online reference source.  Sadly, I've always been disappointed.

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When zillions of baby boomers have their own Facebook and MySpace pages, you know that social media has gone mainstream.  That means that the all text, cookie-cutter press release needs to be sent off to the great PR ranch in the sky.

David Meerman Scott has written extensively about the new rules of PR and marketing in his book of the same name and on his blog, WebInkNow.  He stresses the need to communicate with a universe much broader than the traditional press sources who held the keys to publicity for your company.  Embracing this reality is the all important first step.  But there's more that you can do.

When you are reaching out to this broader group, you should also consider using a completely different version of what used to be called a press release--and is now more properly called a social media press is release. Todd Defren of Shift Communications is a pioneer in the creation of this 21st-century tool.  As he explains it in a quote on the MarketingProfs.com eNewsletter:

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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.

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Joe Pulizzi reports from the B2B NetMarketing breakfast in the Big Apple.

Marketing pros in small companies can and must learn important lessons from the emerging strategies of the smartest large company marketers.  Increasingly, those strategies revolve around content marketing that enables genuine conversations with their customers.

Thanks to Joe Pulizzi, we didn't have to attend the BtoB NetMarketing breakfast to feast on the content marketing lessons even small companies can learn from IBM, CIT, Siemens, and Information Builders.

Joe highlighted the good stuff while eliminating the carbs from the buffet table.

The first lesson comes from his first post, "Is the Main Job of Marketing Today Publishing?", he pointed to the irreversible marketing trend that makes content creation a top priority:

Leading marketing organizations such as IBM and Siemens are focusing the majority of their time, attention and resources on the creation and distribution of their own content to customers and prospects.

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Well, actually it's on the Wall Street Journal's new My Online Journal (MOJ). But, it's a great start!

It means that any WSJ subscriber can customize a reader page that would include our regularly updated content. So, in principal, hundreds of thousands of WSJ online subscribers could include ContentMarketingToday as part of their individual MOJ home page. What's going on? It's all about widgets, content aggregation, and Web 2.0. As we wrote in our post about the Customer Content Conference, the old web(and old media, for that matter) was all about getting people to congregate. Everyone went to the same place and viewed the same content. That's all changing. Today, we are all becoming aggregators of information. Read More

Learn what some of the smartest people in the business had to say about 21st-century marketing.

When you invite leading edge content, marketing, and technology pros to address 150 professionals who spend all their time thinking about content, you are at risk of sensory overload. Particularly when it takes place in New Orleans. So, we will cover the highlights today. In the days to come we will add detailed articles to provide in-depth coverage of individual presentations. If you're not familiar with custom publishing, what's important to know is that it provides targeted and relevant content to carefully selected customers. Content marketing flows directly from custom publishing roots.

Here are the essential 11 content marketing insights to guide your thinking, strategy, and tactics in the months and years to come:

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In a great post from PlanWebs.com the vital nature of content comes through once again. The author, Brent Csutoras, emphasizes that, for both social media and search engine optimization, the easy ways of bringing your site to the top have largely evaporated.

As we have written frequently and at length, the only long-term marketing strategies that will survive revolve around content.  That's true whether your marketing efforts are in person, in print, or online.

Brent heartily concurs that it's all about the content. 

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Starbucks, the Chicago Tribune, and some knuckleheaded commenters

I was planning to write an article about the Starbucks Hail Mary barista quality play that involved closing all of their stores for three hours. Talk about a drought!

But serendipitous searching pointed me in a completely different direction.

As part of my research, I was reading a thoughtful article in the Chicago Tribune online.  Noticing that there were seven comments, I thought they might add some value on the actual user experience following the closing experiment. 

No such luck.

With one exception, the comments were completely useless.  Perhaps worse than useless, they were stupid. Here's a sampling:

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