There are a lot of reasons why content marketing doesn’t work for some companies. If we were making a list, they would include: A lack of understanding reader/customer needs Focusing on the wrong metrics and objectives A soloed approach to content marketing Poor execution Bland storytelling Lack of authenticity Creating information that, simply put, is not helpful or engaging Sales pitches disguised as content And the list goes on…Continue reading

Just ended a pretty impressive Content Marketing Institute webinar hosted by Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing for Eloqua and Rebecca Lieb, Analyst for Altimeter.  During the Q&A session, Joe talked about how to sell content marketing to the C-level through some amazing books.  Below are some recommendations from Joe (and some that I would recommend as well) for the marketing pro that needs more content marketing budget.Continue reading

When you develop a process for your content marketing, you want to do it in a way that ensures creative, out-of-the-box thinking in the most “human” way possible. Just as we don’t want to let chaos rule the day — so too do we want to avoid the robot legalese that disengages our subscribers. In our new book, Managing Content Marketing with Robert Rose, we talk a bit about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  The Daily Show is one of the best written television shows on the air. It’s amazing how almost every single day, despite how quickly the news moves, they manage to stay relevant, focused, and, most of all, hysterically funny.Continue reading

The last month has been a tough one for Penn State students, alumni and the entire community around University Park. For the first time in my life, I was almost hesitant to say I was a Penn State graduate  (I graduated from Penn State in 1997).  Something that once we were so proud of, has been tarnished in a truly horrific way. Yesterday, I received the January/February issue of The Penn Stater, the Penn State Alumni magazine (cover to the right). I honestly got chills picking it up. I just held the issue in my hands for what seemed like minutes.Continue reading

If you’ve ever seen the movie Jerry McGuire, you remember the blue mission statement. This is the moment in the movie when Jerry McGuire (played by Tom Cruise) wakes up in a cold sweat and writes, what he believes, to be the future direction for his sports agency. Well, Coca-Cola’s marketing mission statement is Content 2020, a content marketing brainchild of Coca-Cola’s Jonathan Mildenhall, VP Global Advertising Strategy and Creative Excellence, who recently stated that: “All advertisers need a lot more content so that they can keep the engagement with consumers fresh and relevant, because of the 24/7 connectivity. If you’re going to be successful around the world, you have to have fat and fertile ideas at the core.”Continue reading

It’s been a tradition on this blog to review the best content marketing articles/posts from the past year.  To be fair, we do this completely based on traffic to each post. I’ve been covering the content marketing industry via this blog since April 26, 2007 (my first post). The title of that post was “Why Content Marketing?“. At that time, most people didn’t even know what content marketing was.  Almost 600 original posts later, and the majority of the marketing population is keenly focused on the content marketing revolution.  Thanks to each of you for keeping this revolution going, and how we can turn our customers into brand subscribers through compelling and relevant content.  Here’s to a fantastic 2012. And now, your most popular content marketing articles over the past year.Continue reading

This week the Pulizzi family had a chance to visit the A Christmas Story house for the first time. Most people aren’t aware of this, but the house and many of the scenes from the classic Christmas tale were filmed on the west-side of Cleveland, Ohio in a beautiful neighborhood called Tremont. It happened, but it wasn’t meant to be. There were 20 cities in the original city search for the movie.  Cleveland was not among those 20.Continue reading

I was thrilled with how our 2012 content marketing and social media predictions piece came out this year (full predictions below for viewing and/or download). Social Media & Content Marketing Predictions 2012 View more presentations from Content Marketing Institute With nearly 80 contributors, the predictions were plentiful. But, for whatever reason, here are my favorite 15.  Enjoy!Continue reading

Let the predictions begin. We had about 50 predictions for 2009. 2010 and 2011 brought hundreds more. This year’s content marketing and social media predictions contain more than 150 predictions from over 75 of the leading marketing experts (a big thanks to all our contributors). Here were some of the main themes of last year’s predictions: Facebook will take over the world in 2011, apparently becoming an added appendage to most humans on the face of the planet. (PREDICTION = 80% correct.) While content marketing was clearly accepted in 2010 as a viable marketing practice, 2011 is the year where the majority of companies will get serious about it – adding to budget, getting better at measurement, and begin to develop internal processes and staffing around the consistent creation of content. (PREDICTION = 60% correct… considering our latest content marketing research findings, we are definitely making some progress.) Marketers will become less obsessed with the channel (i.e.,...

Had some fun today going through my archived blog posts and this one stuck out.  I decided to unearth and dust it off a bit. I also added a few additional reasons compliments of the community. It’s hard. It’s more difficult to consistently create valuable and relevant content for your customers than place media. It’s easier to just place an ad.  Listening, creating, co-creating, commenting, and actually having real customer conversations is harder.  Higher payoff (and a content asset), but harder none-the-less. Your company is set up to sell products or services, not to provide relevant and valuable information to customers and prospects. It takes a real mindset change to start thinking about your customers’ informational needs as part of your marketing strategy. Thinking like a journalist doesn’t come naturally. Most marketers don’t know how to connect the company’s knowledge/experience/expertise with the hopes, fears, desires and objectives...

Brands and media companies have been “curating” content for centuries, but 2011 saw the phrase content curation rise near the top of the content marketing stack. I can’t tell you how many marketers have approached me regarding their “content curation strategy” for 2012. Let’s right the ship folks.Continue reading

Back in 2009, I went around the country talking about how brands should start seriously looking at purchasing media/publishing companies in their industries as a core content marketing strategy.  Well, I’m back on that soapbox again. I discussed this strategy in detail on today’s Bulldog Reporter webinar and in this recent blog post. This topic is so important that it needs its own blog post.Continue reading