While you’re enjoying the beach or a barbecue this 4th of July weekend, take a few minutes to ponder how effective content marketing can make you independent of the old-fashioned way of doing things.

Here’s the tasty topics menu from which to choose:

• how to create effective elevator speech to drive your content marketing
• using content marketing to survive the recession
• low cost research as killer weapon
• making an eBook a core component of your content marketing strategy
• become your customers’ online content concierge
• why your blog is your most important social media tool

Read on to see the 6 most popular articles that your fellow content marketers voted for with their visits.

1. How To Create the All-Important Elevator Speech For Your Presentations and for Your Content Marketing    
   It is so hard, but so important to explain what it is that you do and how it will benefit the person to whom you are communicating. Not at length.  But so concisely that it can be communicated in less time than it takes an elevator to go up a few floors. And, so compellingly that your listener will remember and repeat it to others.
   Actually, Nick Morgan is even more precise than this.  He says your elevator speech must be a single sentence. Read more. 
2. Ways Content Marketing Can Help You Survive the Recession
   Crank up your communications now.  Don’t dial back your efforts.
   The knee-jerk reaction for most companies when faced with the recession is to reduce their marketing efforts. However, decades of research show that those who maintain or increase their marketing will blow past their peers once the recession is over. Read more.

3. Why You Should Use Low Cost Research as a Killer Content Marketing Weapon
   First, use it to understand your buyers and their needs. Then use the results to prove your credibility in the market.
   Content marketers realize that understanding what is most important to your current and prospective customers is vital to your success as an organization.  You cannot possibly connect with your customers without that understanding. Read more.

4. Five Reasons an e-Book Should Be a Core Component Of Your Content Marketing Strategy
   Of course, I’m assuming that you already have a website and are probably doing some business blogging.  You may also do a regular eNewsletter to inform your customers and prospects about the great content you have created recently online.  Your next step is to create an e-book that targets your ideal customers. Read more.

5. Want to Attract and Retain Great Customers? Become Their Online Content Concierge!Think of yourself as the ultimate knowledge resource like those concierges serving fine  hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton or the Four Seasons—But Available 24/7.
   When you find yourself in a new town but are blessed to be staying in a hotel with a knowledgeable and caring concierge, you’ve got it made. When your customers come to your website, they are similarly looking to you to solve their problems.  If you can succeed at providing plenty of substantive information that addresses their biggest problems, you are beginning to play the role of content concierge in their lives. Read more.

6. 6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool
   It’s much more powerful than those young whippersnappers–Twitter and Facebook
   Thanks to free or inexpensive blogging tools, any individual can be on the same technological footing as the New York Times or Business Week.  That may seem relatively obvious to many of you.  What I think is less obvious is that your blog is every bit as much a social media tool as Twitter, Facebook or MySpace.  In fact, I believe that a blog is the most important social media weapon in your arsenal. Read more.

Enjoy.

And have a wonderfully, independent and freedom-rich 4th of July!

I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a combined group of wedding planners from Southwest Florida, the Wedding and Party Planners of Naples and the local National Association of Wedding Planners chapter. 

As I was preparing for the talk, the importance of content marketing in general–and of blogging in particular–really hit home.

Because a wedding is so important in so many ways to women of every age and circumstance, each bride needs to feel absolutely confident that it will come off as perfectly as humanly possible.

The current Sprint commercial that imagines a world in which weddings are run by movie crews captures this feeling beautifully.

 
Find more videos like this on AdGabber

You have the young bride for whom unexpected rain threatens to ruin the day.  Of course, because it’s just like a movie,  the crew can stop the rain on command.  Happily, too, you have the appearance of the stunt groom at exactly the right moment who replaces the actual nervous wreck of a husband to be. I’m pretty sure that every former bride and every current wedding planner can relate to this 30 second story of a parallel wedding universe.

Wedding planners may not be able to pull off those kinds of miracles, but I’m sure they often come pretty close. And, that’s what your future customer need to believe about you and your company. A blog can make that happen.

As a wedding planner or as any small business, here’s how your blog can make all the difference in driving more business your way:

• Your prospects are looking for exactly the right solution to an incredibly important problem they are facing right now.  Your blog illustrates the breadth and depth of your knowledge and understanding of their situation.  And, it offers you the opportunity to illustrate a variety of solutions you have provided to people in very similar circumstances. 
• You need to stand out from the pack of providers whose services may look very much like yours to the casual observer.  Your blog posts can illustrate how different you are, how unique your solutions can be, and why you are the most obvious choice for one particular bride at this particular moment.
• You need to engender trust in a future bride who is counting on you to make her wedding day perfect.  The content of your blog will illustrate the kind of person you are, the kind of company you run, the successes you have had, and the stories of weddings that you managed to perfection. This is powerful because the future bride is voluntarily coming to your blog to absorb information about you.  You are not shouting out to a big universe of possible future customers but talking to one receptive customer at a time.
• Great visual images will strengthen your appeal in handling an important day which is very, very visual.  Because blogging software such as WordPress or TypePad makes it easy to include lots and lots of images and even videos, it becomes completely natural for the future bride to imagine results as wonderful as your mages portray.

As a wedding planner you really need a blog to position yourself as the one individual or company that can provide the perfect solution that will create a perfect day for the perfect bride . 

Even if you are not a wedding planner, your customers still have problems that need solving.  On any given day those problems may loom as large as getting rid of the rain or eliminating the bridegroom’s case of last-minute nerves. 

Your blog gives you the opportunity to show exactly how well you understand your customer’s problems and how well-positioned you are to solve them.

AC Transit operates a very sophisticated bus transportation system in the San Francisco Bay area, handling more than 65 million passengers annually in an area covering 364 square miles.  That’s pretty impressive. 

But what really impressed me is the fact that they also make excellent use of the web to tell a story that turns taking the bus into the obvious transportation choice.

AC Transit has created ACT for Me as “Your Guide to the Future of Public Transit.”  They illustrate why AC Transit should be an integral part of your life by sharing a creative range of content—from user-generated videos, to a savings calculator, to a discussion of community and environment benefits, and the exciting future of transit.

Lots of images of happy riders with capsule explanations of their love of AC Transit make an authentic case for their service.  For example, they quote Reginald James, a rider since 1986, “By taking AC Transit I don’t have to worry about rising gas prices and vehicle maintenance costs. Plus, I enjoy riding the bus. I like talking to the different bus drivers and I really appreciate the free wireless internet on the transbay buses.”  Mr. James and his many fellow, real-live riders suggest that becoming an AC Transit regular would be not only the right thing but perhaps even the enjoyable thing to do.

ACT for Me created a fun contest to inspire its passengers to create webisodes that illustrate how the AC transit bus system contributes to making their daily lives better.The contest winner is a delightful video about a young girl and her mom who go to the park every Sunday–and of course take the bus to get there. You can click here to watch the brief video.

AC Transit has done a superb job of enticing Bay Area residents out of their cars and onto the bus by putting a very human face on public transit as the smart alternative to clogged roadways and greenhouse gases. Take a look at what AC Transit is doing on the web to promote public transportation 24 hours a day, seven days a week: ACTforMe.org. it’s a superb use of content by a public agency that rivals anything you might expect from a profit driven corporation.

[Please note that I have made a few changes to the initial post based on constructive feedback, particularly to clarify that this is a dealer enewsletter,not a BMW corporate effort ]

If you were to imagine an eNewsletter from your local BMW dealer, you would probably expect it to lead off with a picture something like the one to the right.

As a BMW owner, you tend to be a certain kind of person.  The folks at BMW have understood your persona well over decades in the United States.  That’s why I’m mystified at the June 2009 eNewsletter from Germain BMW of Naples.

I love my BMW.  I think Germain BMW is a terrific dealership. But, I hate their eNewsletter. Why? Because it has almost nothing to do with the BMW brand promise: BMW—The Ultimate Driving Machine.

Call me crazy but when I get an eNewsletter that has something to do with BMW, I expect that it would deliver on that ‘ultimate driving machine’ brand promise.  Instead here’s what the eNewsletter delivers by way of core content after stripping away the header and some dealer specific webpage links:

What hits you in the face like a big wet fish are a big bunch of misguided elements which are made even worse when you add items from their table of contents:

• A giant RV–incase you’re tired of driving your BMW
• A big picture of watermelons that relates to keeping cool in Florida but has no car connection
• A treetop adventure story that doesn’t appear to involve any driving
• A feature on adopt a cat month(my baseless hunch is that BMW owners are dog people)
• More from the TOC
  • Lessons in longevity for the oldster demographic that BMW targets
  • Make your garden green–for the typical tree hugger BMW owner
  • A story on ice cream–who doesn’t associate BMWs and ice cream cones?

What was the BMW dealer thinking? Who were they targeting? What were they trying to accomplish? How could they go this far off track?  I don’t know.

Vital Content Marketing Lessons to Learn from BMW’s Five Major Missteps

• Make sure that your regular communications with your target customers match your brand promise.  Don’t wander off the ranch like this enewsletter did.
• Make it clear to your target readers that you understand what is really important to them as it relates to the products and services you offer.
• Don’t squeeze so much content into an eNewsletter that nobody is likely to find the time to read it.
• If you feel that you want to combine both precisely targeted content with information that is less targeted, at least lead off with the stuff that aims directly at your ideal customers.
• If you have a strong local presence, don’t let your parent organization overwhelm what could be great local content with unfocused generic material.

Effective marketing can be challenging. But, you don’t have to be a marketing rocket scientist to see how BMW went so far wrong—and how to learn from their goofs.

[I have just received a very polite and thoughtful email from the folks who manage these newsletters for a number of BMW dealers. They will be sharing their perspective with me soon and I will share it with you soon after. Dialogue is good.]

Don’t get me wrong.  The unique part is critical.  But the age old concept of a unique selling proposition views the problem of positioning almost backwards.

The idea of a unique selling proposition is that you need to differentiate yourself from the hundreds or thousands of other vendors with whom you compete.  Theoretically, if you have a really good USP, you can stand apart from all the same old same old that everyone else is selling. 

I think it’s much better to focus on the buyer with a unique buying proposition as the basic foundation for your content marketing strategy. Your UBP is what will get your customers excited  about doing business with you and your company

What is a unique buying proposition and why should you care?

A UBP is a first cousin to a USB.  The difference is that a UBP is all about the buyer and what the buyer will gain from doing business with you.  Thus, your buyers don’t care that you are the only maker of green widgets in the United States.  They do care if your green widgets will enable them to double their sales or cut their manufacturing costs by 50%.

Therefore the structure of a UBP should be something along the lines of: You will achieve X positive outcome by taking advantage of our solution Y which is precisely designed to solve your most challenging problem Z.

Here’s an attempt at a UBP that pretty much misses the point

For a moment this morning I thought I had invented the concept of a UBP.  However, when I got on Google to search for the term I discovered one firm,’ Marketing Insights,’ that leads off its homepage with what it calls a unique buying proposition.  Forget what they call it.  I think it’s still an attempt at a unique selling proposition. Even worse, it doesn’t come across as being meaningfully unique. 

Here’s how they describe their UBP:

With Market Insight Consultants by your side, you are completely convinced of being a winner with -

Exceptionally superior quality and novel survey designs

Fair and high excellence research

Insightful reports

Distinctively customized intercession to serve your business needs

Long lasting partnership

Higher extent of awareness

Eagerness to move ahead towards implementation

Responsibility to deliver the best

The UBP they could have used

Rather than a clear concise UBP, they use a hodgepodge of phrases, some of which make average clichés look hackneyed–"fair and high excellence research, long-lasting partnership, eagerness to move ahead towards implementation."  They suggest that you are "completely convinced of being a winner" but they don’t even begin to explain what that means.

Wouldn’t it have been more powerful to use a UBP along the lines of:

"Our research will enable you to understand, target, and dominate your market." 

When you hear that phrase, you are inclined to respond, “Terrific, Tell me more.” After all, that’s what we really care about.  How will the research that Market Insight conducts empower us to achieve a clear business benefit?

So, as you were working on fine tuning your positioning (as are we all, all the time), focus on a unique buying proposition that is all about your customer and not all about your company.

If you are starting from scratch, it’s almost impossible to figure out what social media and other related online tools will be genuinely useful for marketing your business.  Fortunately, Joe has taken the time to assemble and comment on 42 of the most worthy in his blog.

You’ll find that a common thread among many of the 42 is that they involve both inbound and/or outbound communication. In other words, they will help you send a message to your target buyers or listen to what those buyers are saying about you.

My five favorites of the less well known among the 42 that Joe highlights are:

1. Alltop - The digital magazine rack. Find the alltop for your industry - here’s content marketing.
2. Twitterfeed - Set your RSS feeds to post automatically on Twitter.
3. Zemanta - Great for adding additional content and links (courtesy of Drew McLellan).
4. Teamwork Project Manager - Easy-to-use project management tool.(I and my virtual teammates are enthusiastic proponents).
5. Website Grader - Hubspot product that will grade your website on a number of analytics and social media indicators.  Great free tool!

Check out Joe’s complete list and feel free to make your own contribution to make the list even more valuable.

Needless to say, if you’re not a regular reader of his blog, you’ll want to consider jumping on Joe’s content marketing bandwagon.

Some of the smartest people I know run very small companies in the business-to-business market.  They are dedicated to helping their customers succeed.  In one-on-one discussions with customers and prospects, they make it clear how they can help.  That’s terrific.  And it generates sales.  But it’s just a start.

I am convinced that white papers–and their first cousins, e-books– can extend that in-person knowledge sharing and trust building to the entire world.  A great example is a compelling white paper from The Result Source, called, Cold-Calling 2.0: The Next Generation of Prospecting.

The Result Source, is a small company based in Toronto, Canada that works closely with businesses who need to generate leads which will translate directly into revenue.  Its owner, Marguerite McLeod-Fleming, is a veteran of IBM and other large sophisticated organizations.  She is able to apply her understanding of the importance of process to lead generation for small organizations.

What Cold-Calling 2.0 does so well is to explode the myth that cold calling doesn’t work anymore while demonstrating a repeatable process that will generate sales cost effectively.

Her white paper begins with a compelling Executive Summary:

Let’s face it. Cold-Calling has gotten a bad rap.

If you still think of cold-calling as an ineffective waste of time, phone spam or money down the drain, then this paper is for you. In fact, many “experts” have said that cold-calling is dead. But, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the death of cold-calling are GREATLY exaggerated.

You will learn in this paper why, despite the lingering myth that cold-calling is dead, it still works. And we will show you here why it is still one of the most effective ways of generating new business. We will prove it with examples of companies that have successfully implemented
cold-calling — known as teleprospecting — and yielded incredible results.

We will discuss the difference between cold-calling in the past, and how companies are using cold-calling today as a strategic form of prospecting to open new markets and to generate exponential sales results.

Marguerite then proceeds to make the case for a new generation of cold calling.  Although I am generalizing from my own experience, her white paper stood out among a half-dozen potential vendors of telemarketing services that I was evaluating for a client.  Not only did the white paper give me a high level of confidence in her organization’s capabilities, but it taught me a lot about how companies need manage the entire process of lead generation.

In fact, this white paper follows the golden rule of content marketing: Provide a ton of compelling content that is so valuable that your prospects might normally expect to pay for it.  If your company was large enough or if you have enough discipline, you could probably do what this white paper describes.  But, most of us realize that we must count on skilled professionals to achieve the results that are described in Cold-Calling 2.0

The Result Source whitepaper demonstrates that the company is chock full of the kind of big ideas that will bring immediate and obvious benefit to its customers.  It sure looks like Marguerite invested a significant amount of money in producing this information product.  But, from my perspective, that investment really delivers content marketing value that will, in turn, deliver a measurable ROI.

Be sure to check out Cold-Calling 2.0.  It will provide an excellent model for white papers that you may want to produce.  And, it may also convince you that a new generation of cold calling, in general, and The Result Source, in particular, may offer solutions to your lead generation challenges.

I was surprised, but not too surprised, to learn from a friend and colleague, David Drickhamer, that the famous maker of ergonomic chairs spent almost no money on traditional advertising.

Herman Miller tends to be well ahead of the curve on almost every business front.  After all, this is a company that was into sustainability before it was cool–and before Al Gore was invented global warming (or was that the Internet?). Back in 1984, they stopped using Rosewood when they determined it was an endangered hardwood.

When they introduced their new, high end and incredibly comfortable chair, the Embody, they relied heavily on the blogosphere to spread the word.  Although the traditional press would have been essential to the success of a new product a decade ago, it’s the blogosphere that is overwhelmingly influential today. 

Thus, you cannot find a reference to this new chair in the New York Times online, but you can find more than 80,000 Google citations in a simple search.  Virtually all of the articles about the new chair come from blog writers.  For example, the influential tech blog, Gizmodo, called the new Embody, "the best chair we’ve ever sat on."  Included in the blog post were a zillion pictures illustrating what made this new chair so special.  And, the Post received 72 comments from Herman Miller chair enthusiasts.  Multiply this coverage several hundred times and you get an idea of the influence of the blogosphere on marketing.

Although it is easy to be cynical about the many companies who talk the sustainability talk and blather on about work life balance, it’s pretty clear that Herman Miller walks the walk. They have a very cool content marketing example that makes the case.  It’s an online publication called, Jugglezine, which is subtitled, "an unassuming e-zine about balancing work and life."

Jugglezine offers a fascinating blend of articles that cover topics ranging from design to lifestyle to time management to working at home.  They make it easy to browse by topic using a visual box metaphor to show off the articles.  In genuine content marketing fashion, they write nothing about their products.  They write only about the topics they know are of genuine concern to their customers. Amazingly, Herman Miller has been publishing Jugglezine since 1997.

You almost certainly don’t have Herman Miller’s budget.  But you can emulate their approach to marketing by:

• being authentic in all things marketing
• taking more and more of your marketing messaging online
• creating content with a focus on the information needs of your best customers.  Encapsulate that content in visitor friendly publication format that is designed to attract the attention of those very important customers.
• targeting the relevant blogosphere with your news and information.  Go after those bloggers who care about your part of the business and product universe.

Happily, there is more good news.  Herman Miller also sells chairs that are both comfortable and affordable at Costco, too.

When it comes to the evolution of the Web and of social media, keeping up seems like an impossible task for most business executives.  Nonetheless, keeping up is critically important in order to remain relevant.  The good news that I take away from a recent study by Forrester Research, is that the evolution of the “social Web” will help level the marketing playing field between large and small organizations.  The report was written by a Forrester senior analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, who, not so coincidentally, has a terrific blog, Web Strategy.

In the past, large companies had all the cards.  They had lots of money, lots of people and lots of intrusive but effective messaging.  In the old era of in-your-face marketing, corporate giants could control results in many cases by simply outspending smaller rivals.

Times have changed.  Consumers are now a surging control via a wisdom of the crowds phenomenon.  That is, buyers now find it easy to aggregate around common interests thanks to social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

This fundamental power shift increases the impact of word-of-mouth marketing by orders of magnitude.  Shared consumer experiences are no longer limited to neighborhoods or local communities.  Rather, they have gone global.  This is good news for companies who provide great products and great customer experiences.  And, it is especially good news for small marketers can take advantage of what Forrester Research calls the new “social Web”.

Here is what Forrester Research says about the “Social Web”—from the Executive Summary of their report:

Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

Here’s the key point: “Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems.” In other words, all the money and all the resources in the world won’t grab power back from the consumer.

Therefore, as a small business, you can leverage the power of the social Web to accelerate acceptance of your company and of your products and services. It’s vital that you begin to think like a social media marketer.  That begins with your blog and extends to a core set of social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

One thing for sure: Having a great website is essential.  But it’s just the beginning of an effective social media strategy.  To understand why, I think you’ll find these recent posts helpful:

6 Reasons Why Your Blog Is Your Most Important Social Media Tool

Why Your Website is Just the Beginning of an Online Strategy

Learn more about the Forrester Research report in an excellent article from CRM.com: Social Media: The Five-Year Forecast, which includes extensive excerpts from an interview with Jeremiah. They emphasize the rapid and disconcerting pace of change, “Slow to gain momentum, social networking has increased dramatically in recent years and Owyang sees it continuing along a “hockey-[stick]” growth rate. “Innovation is matching adoption,” he says, “and it’s going to happen very rapidly in the next few years.”

In other words, fasten your social media seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

But, for those small businesses who can figure out how to leverage the new social Web, they will find themselves much better able to compete with even the biggest of the big boys.

Although they are in the advertising business, small publishing companies have never done much advertising for their magazines. The reasons were simple, but not necessarily obvious: They didn’t have to—and it wouldn’t work if they tried it.

By emulating the best practices of small publishing companies, you can minimize traditional marketing costs, too. Believe it or not, it all comes back to content marketing. 

Why publishers can market effectively without advertising

Here is how publishers increase the likelihood that influential buyers will purchase advertising from them.  It couldn’t be simpler. Simply create an outstanding magazine filled with world-class content that provides thought leadership for their publication within their carefully targeted market.  Not only will  their subscribers value what they do, but their potential advertisers will value them just as much. 

Unfortunately, current business realities are bringing even the best publishers to grief.  But, that means you are even better positioned to benefit from effective content marketing.  

Here’s what to emulate:

The best marketers immerse themselves completely in their target markets.  When they find a publication that brings a market alive, it will become a trusted partner in their ongoing acquisition of marketing knowledge.  Moreover, there is a synergy between reader loyalty and the willingness of potential advertisers to invest money with your magazine.  As a content marketer, it’s even better. Your readers are your buyers.

As a publisher or as a content marketer, your readers trust you and are more likely to buy

It has been universally true that prospective buyers who are regular readers of every publication that I managed were dramatically more likely to accept an appointment, to listen carefully to what you had to say, and ultimately to buy advertising.  Conversely, for those buyers who were not regular readers, it was much more difficult just to get your foot in the door–let alone to persuade them to buy advertising.

This, of course, is precisely the way that content marketing works.  Publishers didn’t start out to do content marketing.  But, we all knew that marketing executives who read and loved our publications, would almost invariably become our very best customers.  That’s because we were providing relevant and compelling content about the markets that they cared very much about–that is markets that they were targeting with their products and services.  These marketers made the inference that because we were providing consistently outstanding content, they could trust us as a place to put their advertising dollars.

Why publishers can’t get a decent ROI on traditional advertising

As a former publisher and owner of a small publishing company, I was acutely aware of a major challenge that we face in advertising to our buyers.  Here’s the problem: there are almost no efficient media vehicles that will reach advertising buyers.

That’s exactly the challenge I faced when I owned a small regional business magazine called,  Southwest Florida Business.  We called directly on other business owners and executives in the region.  We attended targeted business events.  We were active in the business community.  That was great, but we would have liked to do more.

We would also have loved to deliver a consistent marketing message in a targeted media vehicle that reached our buyers. Unfortunately, there was no such external outlet.

Apart from our own magazine, there was no well targeted place to invest advertising dollars.  Traditionally, our most logical choices would be local newspapers, radio or TV, and the Yellow Pages.  More recently, we might also consider comparable online venues.  None of these entities enabled us to target our buyers efficiently.  Any message that we delivered via traditional advertising, would be just one more form of interruption marketing.  Why?  Because only one of our choices honed in on our most important buyers.  Every other choice provided just a scattershot approach to reaching possible buyers.

What was that one choice?  Of course it was our magazine, Southwest Florida Business.  Any outbound marketing that we did, was done in the pages of our magazine.  Because we knew our magazine was very well read and respected by our buyers, we knew that our marketing message was also likely to be read and respected.

The essential content marketing lessons you can draw from the experience of thousands of publishers.

We publisher types were practicing content marketing 25 years ago.  Of course, we were doing it by accident–and we didn’t have a name for it.  But, this is why our inadvertent content marketing strategy worked so well for so long:

• We carefully defined a target audience that was important to our potential advertisers
• We crafted content that would be consistently valuable to that audience.
• We delivered publications to those targeted buyers month after month. 
• We became a trusted source of information for those buyers
• We were able to help our advertisers succeed because they were an integral part of that trusted information source.

Today, because of the tsunami of buying behavior changes and the concurrent ascendance of the Internet, companies of every size can easily emulate best content marketing practices.  Of course, these trends are making it much more difficult for publishing companies to survive because smart marketers are using content marketing to establish their own thought leadership. 

That is a sad,  unfortunate and probably irreversible trend.  But that very same trend now offers you an unparalleled opportunity to dominate a market niche by delivering consistently great content that makes it easy for your prospects to buy from you.