Content Marketing Today

New Book Co-authored by David Meerman Scott Reinforces Content Marketing Principles

Too many companies develop products based on their own inward looking approach.  According to the new book "Tuned In," that's exactly backwards.

They offer as a delightfully disastrous example: The introduction of the Susan B. Anthony dollar in1979. Between the misguided efforts of the US Mint and vending machine lobbyists, the government managed to introduce a product nobody wanted.  In fact, as the authors point out, extensive research had showed that such a coin would be a colossal failure.  Why the failure?  Simple.  Nobody wanted a dollar coin, particularly one that would look almost exactly like a quarter.

To succeed with product development, it is essential to take the opposite approach.  Determine what your customers want and provide a product or service so compelling that your customers will sell it for you. Of course, this approach is at the very heart of successful content marketing best practices.

Sales Streak Past 1000 Copies. Online Marketing Guru Recommends Our Book.

One thousand copies pales in comparison to any of the Harry Potter books.

But, put into context, it suggests solid acceptance of Get Content. Get Customers. among business book buyers.  Here's what our book and every new book is up against in attempting to penetrate a very tough, competitive market(numbers from bookstatistics.com):

• In 1947, there were 357 publishers; in 2004 85,000 publishers
• 2.8 million books in print in 2006
• 291,920 books published in the U.S. in 2006
• average book sells 500 copies in U.S.
• 30% of books had print runs of less than 100
• only 20% of books sold more than 100 copies
• only 10% of books sold more than 1000

Thanks to so many of you and to the support of marketing experts like Shama Hyder, we have been able to beat the odds by exceeding the sales of 90% of all books published in the U.S.

Big bucks squandered to insert content free DVD in magazine

You can be sure that an advertising sales rep did a great job convincing the Harding Poorman Group to insert a DVD in the October 2008 issue of Book Business.

While conceding that they do show off their packaging technology, they blew the opportunity to demonstrate to their prospects the kind of rich content that DVD could and should contain.  In other words, it all boils down to a missed content marketing opportunity.  Prospects are likely to say, "I loved your packaging, but you don't show me why I should invest big bucks to put a DVD in a magazine."

Attend an 11 a.m. Friday morning webcast hosted by content expert Roger Parker!

If you haven't yet bought our book, Get Content. Get Customers. you'll have the opportunity to learn a lot for free just by dialing in. You can get the specifics in Roger's website, PublishedandProfitable.com.

To attend the Friday 10/10 11am, eastern time event, call dial 1-218-486-1616 and use PIN #513391

B2B Publishing Companies Need to Take Another Daring Step

Publishing veteran and content marketing consultant, Mike Azzara, explains why helping your customers succeed is essential but not enough for the survival of these veteran business-to-business media organizations.

In the October 1, 2008 issue of Publish.com, Mike, a former colleague and long-time friend, explains why trade publishers need to add a new set of content marketing services to make it through the 21st century.

His superb analysis included two core takeaways that point to the future of publishing--and of marketing.

We also signed with a top tier agent whose company has handled multimillion copy business bestsellers.

This might seem just like an excuse for self-promotion.  But really and truly, it's an example of how content marketing can work to achieve an astonishing result that neither Joe nor I would have anticipated when we began work on Get Content. Get Customers. in August 2007.

We decided to self publish because the efforts of rookie authors to sign with a major publishing company would at best have delayed the publication of the book by six to 12 months.  And, at worst, been an exercise in frustration in addition to wasted time.

Here's how content marketing made it all happen:

Take it from author and PR guru, Rohit Bhargava.  Make your brand talkable.

Generating positive and pervasive word-of-mouth is easy if you do something starts everyone talking about you and your brand.

That's what Rohit Bhargava posits in his wonderful book,  Personality Not Included.  Although I intend to review the entire book soon, I wanted to extract a wonderful point that he makes about the concept of talkability and its relationship to word-of-mouth marketing.

We all know that word-of-mouth marketing has been powerful from time immemorial.  That said, it's easier to talk about it than to make it happen.  And,talkability is the ticket.

Publishing executive opens his readers to the importance of content marketing

Whether you are an author, a book publisher or just an avid reader, you should be reading Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 blog to get a sense of the future of publishing in every imaginable form.  In fact, he subtitles his blog: "A Book Publisher's Future Visions of Print, Online, Video and All Media Formats Not Yet Invented.

Joe is Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John R. Wiley & Sons, Inc., a publicly traded company with $1.4 billion in annual revenues.  Wiley is doing some great work that extends well beyond print publishing.  It's obvious that they understand the need to be online and to be interactive as well.

So, I was especially pleased to be asked by Joe to do an online interview about our new book, Get Content.  Get Customers. His first question was intriguing because it suggests that "content marketing" is still not an obvious concept.  Here's the first question and answer:

And, just as with successful advertising, frequency is also fundamental to success.

A critical mass of content reflected in lots of pages is the secret to successful magazine.  Skin and bones may work for runway models, but it does not work in the publishing business.  It's okay for you to look like a triathlete, but your magazine should render up a little more closely to Henry VIII.

In a recent research study, Forbes.com and Gartner revealed more data that is bound to be disconcerting for the newspaper industry. 

Already battered by dramatic readership declines among younger people, this research about C-level executive behavior continues to paint a very bleak picture for the industry.  As detailed in a MediaPost blog post, the research shows that "the Internet continues to be the most influential and important source of business information for C-level executives around the world."

Time was when business executives combined their java in the morning with cover to cover readership of the local paper--especially to catch up on local, regional, and national business information.  Virtually every local daily newspaper combined its own coverage of business with wire stories from AP or UPI.  Of course, as recently as 15 years ago, the only other alternative would have been local TV news, which provides little to no business coverage.

Unfortunately, as local newspaper business sections shrink or disappear entirely, online business information is much richer and more compelling.