Content Marketing Today

Written by Geoffry James. 

Facebook's latest $1 billion acquisition smacks of a desperation that LinkedIn consistently manages to avoid.

With all due respect to Facebook, paying $1 billion for Instagram smacks of desperation.

It's as if CEO Mark Zuckerberg is terrified of becoming irrelevant and is willing to spend insane amounts of money in order for Facebook remain on the forefront of cool.

Read more at Inc.com: Full coverage of the Facebook-Instagram deal
That's a hopeless quest, though. Facebook may be many things, but it's not cool any longer. It lost that imprimatur back when it allowed corporate pages (yes, even yours) and advertising.

Where Is the Love? Read More

Content Marketing is about the most effective way to harness content's ubiquity and power. Individual pieces of content work to attract and engage web users, but when the pieces are combined, the effect can be dramatic. Read More

Great Video from AT&T Illustrating the Contents of Their New Research

As the study indicates, inexpensive, modern grassroots marketing techniques -- both online and offline -- have grown to be among the most popular for small businesses in the past several years likely due to ease of use and general affordability. Read More

Written by Amanda Maksymiw I am always on the lookout for new killer examples of content marketing at work, especially in a B2B setting. A couple of weeks ago I heard that my friend Michael Brenner has been working full throttle to release a content site from SAP. Business Innovation at SAP features informational and thought leadership content on various technology including mobility, analytics, and cloud computing. The site will combine content from SAP employees, thought leaders in [...] Read More

When Google+ was unveiled last year, a lot of content marketers wondered if they really needed another social media platform to develop and maintain. But, with the more recent introduction of Search Plus Your World, Google+ is getting harder to ignore. Read More

Amanda Maksymiw of OpenView Venture Partners shares her inspiration and advice on content marketing.

In 2009, the Boston-based venture capital firm OpenView Venture Partners was not satisfied with its branding. Rather than hiring a marketing firm, OpenView founder Scott Maxwell found his solution in a book called Get Content Get Customers.(co-authored by Newt Barrett)  Read More

The new Facebook Business Page is not only a visual transformation of the site, it is a game changer for the marketing function.

The fact that Facebook will automatically transition existing business pages to the new format over the next thirty days means that marketers will have no choice but to evolve from the static "tabs" mindset to a "Timeline" mindset based on continually fresh, engaging, and authentic content.

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Written by Brianne Carlon

A good goal for headlines is to evoke emotion in some way. Whether it is amusement, curiosity, joy or sorrow, intriguing a reader is the biggest responsibility of a headline. And there have been some good ones over the past few years: Read More

With digital ad revenue projected to overtake all other platforms by 2016, it is the key to the financial future of news. Are news organizations transitioning their legacy advertisers to online platforms?

Between 2011 and 2015, revenue from digital advertising in the United States is expected to grow by 40% and to overtake all other platforms by 2016.
Yet how much of that growth will go to underwrite news remains in doubt and throws into question the financial future of journalism as audience continue to migrate online. What will happen pivots in part on whether the news industry can move into the more lucrative areas of digital advertising, particularly using consumer data to target ads, persuading major legacy advertisers to also advertise online and moving into new revenue areas. Read More

Here is an overview of the changes and how brands can take advantage of some of the new features.

Cover Photo and Profile Image
Obviously one of the biggest changes that we all knew was coming was the cover photo. No more photo strip across the top. You now have one large image to showcase your page. This image must be a minimum of 399 pixels across to be used as the cover photo. But you can have a photo cover designed to take advantage of the extra space you get. The cover photo maximum dimensions are 850 pixels by 315 pixels. Read More