Content marketing experts weigh in on what’s ahead. Consider this fair warning. Read answers to questions like "where are we headed?" and "what technologies will change the field?"

Bento boxes satisfy the obsessive-compulsive disorder-side of my personality, organizing those fishy morsels of sushi goodness into visually beautiful patterns of color and flavor. The bento box is a great visual metaphor for the role of information design in content marketing. Information design is the art of presenting content on the page (or screen) in a way that makes it easier for your readers to understand and remember your message. Just like the bento box, a well-organized article or report should include highly visual modular elements that separate sections of your work and embellish key points.Continue reading

How does a toy company that sells easily replicable building blocks build an iconic brand? Our April issue of Chief Content Officer magazine explains the strategy LEGO used to fight copy-cat toy companies. In the 1980s and 1990s, LEGO faced a tremendous threat from competing construction toys. After all, the very simplicity of LEGO’s building blocks also made them very easy to duplicate, both by small-scale copycats as well as established toy companies. LEGO unsuccessfully tried toblock Tyco Toys, Inc., from selling the Super Blocks series after LEGO’s patent ran out in 1983. The company knew it needed to build a powerhouse brand and integrated marketing approach to compete against a growing set of building-block imitators. Today, LEGO is a content powerhouse, at times more closely resembling a media company than a toy company. Here’s a rundown of their integrated content marketing program.Continue reading

In the second issue of Chief Content Officer magazine, to be released next week, we share our befuddlement about Quora. The premise of the super-hot social site seems sound: posit a question and get crowd-sourced answers back, prioritized by their popularity. But actually navigating around and understanding the Quora rules is a bit like the awkward embarrassment you feel when show up at a Dresden Dolls concert in a pink polo shirt (I speak from experience).Continue reading

The B2B Content Marketing 2010: Professional Services Industry Report is based on research conducted by Junta42 and MarketingProfs in September 2010. I, for one, was surprised by the findings. I always assumed professional service firms were leaders in thought leadership marketing. They practically invented the discipline, after all. When I think of which companies I believe are most sophisticated and successful in using content to support sales and brand awareness, I think of McKinsey, Booz & Company and PwC. Turns out, professional service firms are not more likely to use content marketing—in fact, they trail their peers in a number of important ways.Continue reading

NOTE: Chief Content Officer magazine is completely free while we are in beta.  Get your free subscription today! (and it will continue to be free after that) When Joe Pulizzi asked me to join him to launch Chief Content Officer magazine, I leapt at the chance in part because I love the glossy, rich feel of a print magazine. You could even say I’m a bit of an addict, subscribing to ten magazines at home—from the uber-hip Fast Company to straight-laced Foreign Affairs (and more than a few low-brow mags in between that I hide under the couch when company comes over).Continue reading

I’m not a cultish Apple fan, but the iPad has me swooning. For online content fanatics, it’s the ultimate consumption gadget… sort of like a Big Gulp for technophiles. For those of you lucky enough to have an iPad under the tree this season, here’s a round-up of the very best iPad apps for content marketers. Flipboard The app that leaves content marketer hearts aflutter. It aggregates your favorite online reading materials and suggestions from friends, and plops it all into a stunner magazine format. Think RSS feed + glossy mag. This app alone is worth the $500 iPad price tag. For a better understanding of the Flipboard experience, see the video. Cost: Free Continue reading

Each year for the last 13 years, PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) has published their much-anticipated Global CEO Survey. Released at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos each year, the PwC CEO Survey gives us access to over 1,000 business and government leaders—and in the last two years has been a valuable barometer of business confidence. Last year, for the first time, PwC began to offer the survey in multiple formats, including customized reports by industry and geography, as well as multimedia versions of specific sections. Marketers can learn a lot from how PwC manages to use this single research activity to produce dozens of sub-reports, multi-media presentations and events. They have perfected the art of content multiplication.Continue reading

Like it or not, the ranks of traditional print journalists are shrinking at an astounding rate. The Pew-funded State of the News Media report for 2010 reveals that “roughly a third of the newsroom jobs in American newspapers in 2001 are now gone.” That’s a staggering figure. For business journalists, however, the future does not look so bleak. B2B marketers have finally realized that journalists offer incredible research and storytelling expertise. Continue reading

You have developed a content marketing strategy and assembled your subject-matter experts to provide whip-smart analysis and compelling story-telling. But how will you package your content for delivery to prospects & clients?Continue reading