Content Marketing Today

Just When You Hoped Things Might Slow Down, They Speed Up

The smart folks at CMO.com understand the need to make these rapidly changing trends understandable and actionable.

What words come to mind when thinking about the digital marketing landscape? Complicated? A deep morass? Or a land of opportunity? No doubt, digital marketing has experienced a huge uptick in the number of channels and devices at its disposal, further underscoring the need for marketers to determine the best allocation of their budgets. Shifting priorities and increased competition have not made life any easier.

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Via Scoop.it - Content Marketing Now

From the Hubspot Blog, by Karen Rubin

HubSpot launches a free new tool to help you evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your entire marketing program.

Since 2006, HubSpot's award-winning free tool, Website Grader, has graded more than 4 million websites. Website Grader has given marketers advice on how to improve many aspects of their websites and encouraged millions to bring their website presence to the next level, all for free. But now the time has come to replace Website Grader! A lot has changed since 2006, and these days, marketing is about much more than just your website. Read More

Sure They’re on the Web, But They’re Also Out and About on the Streets of Naples, Florida

Imagine my surprise when I pulled up behind this small van on a Naples street.

I started to get hungry just looking at the back of the van. This is mobile marketing that quite literally whets my appetite.

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B Squared Marketing Shares Its Wisdom While Making It Short and Sweet

I might be getting carried away. But, I loved this very brief bit of marketing advice when it showed up on my iPhone this afternoon.  I think it proves how brevity can be the soul of content marketing brilliance in a social media milieu.

B Squared is an established SW Florida Advertising that does great work and has won a ton of awards. I knew that, but I hadn’t thought of them for ages until I saw their Facebook post this afternoon.  I was so struck that I had to write something right now.

Advertising Tip of the Week: Want to drive more traffic? Consider condensing a 3 to 4 month advertising budget to just 6 weeks and build a promotion around it.

Six Reasons Why This Makes for Fabulous Content Marketing

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Get Ready to Rethink Your Content Marketing by Aiming at Millions of Buyers on the Move

For those of us who been around computing since the early days of PCs, the consumer move to mobile devices and away from desktop and even laptop computers is astonishing--and maybe a little terrifying.

In the first year of its existence, 1981, the IBM PC sold 100,000 units. Most of those buyers were geeks or leading-edge business users. Apple's iPad sold 1 million units in less than one month and 2 million units in just two months. IPad users still include geeks and business types but they're just as likely to include your six-year-old and your grandmother.

These unbelievable sales numbers represent a fundamental transformation in the way a very large segment of the population is consuming information and accessing the Internet. To get some idea of the seismic nature of this shift take a look my favorite highlights from a presentation given by Morgan Stanley at the June 2010 CM Summit in New York City:

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A Powerful, Portable, Flexible, Connected, Social, and Cool Information and Entertainment Device for the 21st Century

[I have made corrections below on the elements to the original story re Apple Newton. I made the edits because careful reader, Zach Leary, noted my Steve Jobs history was way off and that he had no involvement in the creation or development of the Newton.] Timing is everything. Too early with too little for too few and you lose. That was the fate of the Apple Newton which might be considered the great grandfather of the iPad. That won’t be the future of the iPad as it comes to market at just the right time, providing a marvelous new outlet for content marketers to capture the increasingly mobile digital generation that now includes most of us.

The Sad Fate of the Apple Newton in the 1990s. Great idea. Unfortunate timing.

For Apple, the Newton was a tablet pc that was too early to deliver on its lofty promise in the early 90s.  It failed not because the ultimate concept was wrong, but because users weren’t screaming for a mobile device and because the Newton’s capabilities were limited and disappointing to many.  In many respects, the Newton was a remarkable product for its time, but it didn’t deliver enough value to captivate millions of users as its descendents the iPod and iPhone have done. Apple might have been too early with a tablet but will be will be proven right over time. Steve Jobs killed it off in 1998 when he returned after his multi-year hiatus.  But the tablet concept lived on. The iPad delivers what the Newton just hinted at . This new device reflects everything Apple has learned about computing and communications as they introduced and continually improved their highly mobile products--from the Newton to the iPod, to the iPhone, and now to the iPad.

The iPad in 2010 is Dressed for Success.  Incredible idea. Terrific timing. Genuine Game Changer.

The new iPad dwarfs the old Newton: It’s colorful, connected, powerful, packed with storage, easy to use, larger, thinner, and just a bit heavier. The iPad not only delivers solutions for today's users demand, but is perfectly positioned to dominate for years to come as the standard for tablet computing on the go. When you introduce a product that matches a confluence of powerful trends, you win.  Here’s why I believe that the iPad is that product: Read More