Content Marketing Today

Just two years after the launch of Social Media Examiner, founder Michael Stelzner has plenty to be proud of. He runs one of the world’s top business blogs, with an email list of more than 124,000 and growing, plus over 450,000 visitors per day. He also recently published his latest book, Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition, that details his strategy for developing new business initiatives. Read More

  Get content. Get customers.,has now sold more than 10,000 copies in its hardcover, paperback, and eBook editions.

Even though Joe Pulizzi and I wrote and updated it in the early stages of the content marketing revolution, our book’s vital lessons and detailed case studies are just as valid and valuable today. 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.

If you haven’t yet read Get Content Get Customers, 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, just to wet your content marketing whistle, here are the top 10 takeaways 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.

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A Compelling  and Affordable Video Did the Trick

Normally in Hollywood, when you're trying to get someone to join the cast of a picture, it involves actors and their agents, directors, studios, sending scripts back and forth, and lots of other rigmarole.

When you're trying to attract a big star like Amy Adams, at best, this process is inefficient. At worst, it is completely ineffective.

The producer of the new Muppets movie, Jason Segel, decided to use content marketing to appeal to Amy Adams, who had lately been appearing in pretty serious dramas such as, The Fighter. Although he probably had no idea that his approach involved content marketing, his perfectly targeted video illustrates all the best of what content marketing can be—and can accomplish.

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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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Solopreneur Firm Understands How to Engage, Educate, and Entertain

There are dozens of electrical firms in Southwest Florida. Many of them have lots of employees. But, one of those firms stands out on Facebook: Martin McMurtrie's Grace Electric with 601 Facebook friends.

Making Vivid Visual Points to Engage Facebook Fans

This photograph from his Facebook page shows the kind of scary electrical fixes customers often attempt , sometimes with disastrous results. It typifies the kind of engaging content he provides regularly and that has enabled him to accumulate those hundreds of Facebook friends.

By contrast, the only local competitors I could find on Facebook provided very little useful information and managed to accumulate fewer than 10 Facebook friends.

For example, one well-known national franchise with numerous Florida locations manages a Facebook page for its Southwest Florida franchisee. But, it has only 9 fans. And, the only content on its Wall is spam from a provider of Acai berry services. 

Grace Electric: Lots of Real Content from a Real Person

Martin proves that you don't need an MBA from Harvard to create an effective presence on Facebook. What comes through on the Grace Electric Facebook page is Martin's natural friendliness and sense of humor, as well as his obvious knowledge of his profession.

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George Bowers Grocery Makes a  Fun 1 to 1 Connection That's Impossible for the Big Chain to Match

The right niche and the right approach enable a two-person company to outshine a retailing giant on Facebook. That's true of George Bowers Grocery in Staunton Virginia where owners Katie McCaskey and Brian Weidman have created a delightful grocery store that focuses on high-quality foods and other specialty products.

The couple knew they could not compete head-to-head with the local Kroger supermarket in their community. Instead they have captured the spirit of the original 19th-century owner as a provider of "staple goods & fancy groceries."

They offer wonderful local meats, cheeses, wines, and craft beers as well as a variety of specialty items. They target the diverse mix of neighborhood residents, local food enthusiasts, and culinary tourists each with their own distinctive interests and needs. The atmosphere of the store itself is an eclectic blend of the old-fashioned and the modern.

And, they have a lot of fun with their marketing, in person and online.

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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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Geico’s Drill Sergeant Therapist Gets It Just Right. Mayflower Marionette Gets It All Wrong.

Even though they spend plenty of money on television advertising, Geico doesn't need to spend much money at all for this incredibly effective commercial which is one of a series that are similarly effective.

On the other hand, Mayflower has created an elaborate series of giant marionette television commercials which are certainly expensive but almost as certainly ineffective.

Geico Makes a Simple Point and Ties It to a Compelling Story

The commercial begins with an intro asking whether Geico can really save you 15% on automobile insurance and then segues into a little vignette that tells a story that virtually all of us would believe would be intuitively true. The connection is then simply made between the story and the saving of 15% on automobile insurance.

This commercial series is not about some highfalutin branding or image making. Rather, it's about telling a simple story that is not only easy to remember but is also easy to retell. Even better, most of these Geico ads are also pretty darned funny. That makes them even more memorable.

The best content marketing should include compelling stories to which your customers and prospects can relate easily. This may be hard to do. But it does not have to be expensive.

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Marketing Campaign Trashes Worst Suspected  Big Brokerage Firm Traits

One of the great things about funny advertising campaigns is that they tend to be particularly memorable.

Even better, we’re more likely to talk about them with our friends.  And in the viral age, we can even share commercials via YouTube and other social media. 

Best of all, funny commercials that also embed a simple and compelling message, make it unavoidable for us to remember both the commercial and the message.

In their latest TV advertising campaign, Scottrade invented the character, Chad A. Ridgeway, who represents all of the worst traits we ever experienced or imagined about the folks who tried to get us to invest big bucks with them. 

Chad is slick and just this side of sleazy. He plays racquetball, travels in a limo, and owns his own medium-size yacht. What we know for sure is he managed to get where he is by charging us a lot of money to buy and sell stocks.  But, as we learn from the commercials, all  that easy money and easy living may vanish because of the compelling value offered by Scottrade.

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Even in good economic times, you may face tough competition. During our brutal lingering economic slowdown, it really is a jungle out there.

When it comes to making your way safely through that jungle, who better to turn to than the ultimate content marketing warrior, Amazon.com?  After all, they are not only brilliant e-commerce players but they are just about the best at connecting with their customers.

Arguably, Amazon.com changed the rules for all online retailing but is a certainly changed the rules for bookselling. Since Amazon's founding in 1995, the brick-and-mortar Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association has dropped from 365 stores to just 188. Even the venerable Seattle-based Elliott Bay was forced to leave its 40 year location in Pioneer Square or cheaper quarters elsewhere.

Amazon.com leverages the long tail phenomenon of selling zillions of product units all the way from best-sellers to books and other products that would never make it into a brick-and-mortar establishment. they do a brilliant job of logistics and supply-chain management, stacking just what they need, organizing print on demand where appropriate, and enabling overnight delivery for the vast majority of the products they sell.

All of that is exceptional and essential, but I believe they really shine by doing a superb job of connecting with their customers so that those customers want to keep doing business with Amazon.com year in and year out.

In fact, Amazon.com is a superb content marketer.  You probably don't have their size and scale but you can certainly emulate their approach to their customers in the following ways:

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