One of our goals for my opening keynote at Content Marketing World was to make sure the marketing professionals in the audience understood that content marketing is NOT new.  This two minute video tells the tale (this video opened the conference): Most people think that content marketing is a new thing, but it’s been going on since the time of the cave paintings.  John Deere, and their customer magazine The Furrow, is given credit for the first content marketing initiative.  At that time, farmers needed to be educated on the latest in technology so they could be more successful. Instead of buying attention, they created a print magazine in 1895, teaching farmers all about the latest in technology and trends for farmers.  Over 100 years later and 1.5 million in distribution to 40 countries, The Furrow could be the most successful content marketing initiative in history. Some other timeline facts you may not be aware of: 1900 – Michelin develops the “Michelin Guides”...

Tonight, we’ll be kicking off Content Marketing World at Cleveland’s own Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s evolution began in 1986 and has since added myriad rock ’n’ roll artifacts, along with 269 inductees, including 619 individuals. The museum in Cleveland opened in 1995. We had a chance to sit down with Terry Stewart, president and CEO of the Hall, and Todd Mesek, the Hall’s VP of marketing and communications, to talk about the challenging roles of marketing the Hall to a global audience.Continue reading

Ellen Moreau is on the front line of content marketing on a daily basis as VP of Marketing Communications for Sherwin Williams Paint Stores Group. Her responsibilities take her from fundamental marketing practices to more sophisticated social media marketing strategies. Moreau’s session at Content Marketing World is designed to inform session-goers of the value of content marketing and its many facets. She shared her insights on content marketing and other strategies in the following Q&A.Continue reading

A new pizza joint called PizzaBOGO just opened up on the west side of Cleveland. We decided to give it a try. Yes, the pizza was great…but even more exciting was the pizza box (I know, I’m a marketing geek). On the box are contact points wherever PizzaBOGO customers are at: Online – Go to the Website Facebook Twitter Text in your order QR Code which takes users directly to the coupons of the day And, if you want even better offers, just need to sign up for their email alerts.  But it gets better…if you want the best deals on the planet (even better than the email alerts), you can sign up to be part of their BOGOclub where you get their special recipes, coupons and free products (great way to segment their audience and create loyal customers). I’d make only one recommendation…put a phone number on the box.  Sometimes people still call in for their pizza. Great pizza…even better marketing.

The past few months have been busy. The big international content marketing event is next week. We launched a content marketing news channel. The Content Marketing Institute site got a much-needed face lift. So, you probably could tell that I was getting a bit bored…so Robert Rose and I decided to write a book (launching at Content Marketing World) called Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand. Why this Book and Why Now? In my first book with Newt Barrett, Get Content Get Customers, we needed to explain the why of content marketing.  Back in 2008, most marketers didn’t get the concept yet. Fast forward three years and everyone we talk to and consult with get the concept, but they are all struggling with how to actually implement and integrate content marketing into their organizations.  That’s exactly what Managing Content Marketing is…it’s an owner’s manual to help you actually put content marketing...

We’re pleased to announce that on August 17, Cleveland City Council presented the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) with a resolution of recognition for spearheading the content marketing movement in Northeast Ohio, with special acknowledgement for hosting the international conference, Content Marketing World. Continue reading

My good friend Morgan Hurley from the Society of Fire Protection Engineers sent me this article from Fast Company on how brands like LEGO and Nike are working to “hijack the news” to take the focus off the real news and more attention put on their brands. Case #1 – LEGO To celebrate the marriage of Prince William and Catherine Middleton in April this year, a team of LEGO designers created a replica of Westminster Abbey for the British Legoland Park. It included the royal bride and groom, along with thousands of LEGO spectator figures witnessing the marriage of their future king. In return, Lego was given news-style publicity that reached millions. Case #2 – Nike At the 2010 World Cup, Nike managed to ambush the ads of Adidas, who have been the official sponsors of the world’s premier soccer event since 1970. Nike’s World Cup campaign featured three-minute sporting biographies of soccer’s superstars — their triumphs as well as their failures. The...

Editor’s note: Our Content Marketing Playbook is back, by popular demand. Check out our 2016 version.  After months of work, the Content Marketing Playbook is finished. A big thanks to Jonathan Kranz, who worked with me to put this together, and our sponsors PR Newswire and Eloqua for making this possible. What is the Content Marketing Playbook? This year’s Playbook consists of 42 different content marketing tactics, all ranked in popularity by the CMI community.  The top 10 include:Continue reading

What does agnostic marketing mean? Alan Maites uses this definition: “We make marketing decisions impartially, without inherent bias for or against any one kind of communications channel – TV, print, online, direct mail, etc.” Okay, makes sense right?  Well, how about content marketing agnostic? I would say the definition runs something like this: “We make content marketing channel decisions impartially, focusing on the needs of the customer and our marketing goals, not focusing on the channels we are comfortable with or have traditionally used.  In addition, instead of focusing on the channel, we focus first on the story, and how that story should be told differently and most effectively through any and all channels available to maximize impact, engagement and results.” Recently, I’ve stumbled across three examples of this in corporate and traditional journalism that might be helpful. The Practice of Content Marketing Cannot Be Siloed I gave this presentation at the Email...

Hats off to CMI‘s creative director Joseph Kalinowski for putting together the first in our series of Content Marketing World/Rock mash-ups. As of this post, we are less than five weeks away until the big event.  Attendees at this year’s conference include marketing professionals from Honeywell, Siemens, Citrix, Oakley, FedEx, United Way, Gannett, KeyBank, National Instruments, GE, JD Power & Associates, Cisco, NASA and hundreds of other leading small and large brands.

Listened to an excellent presentation by Chris Sullivan from Bunchball yesterday at Custom Media Day 2011 in New York. If you are not familiar with gamification (adding game components to your content to increase engagement and retention), check out this post from Rick Liebling as well as the Wikipedia definition for gamification.  Online gaming such as Farmville and Angry Birds have brought gamification to the forefront as an important part of the overall content marketing strategy. Simply put, gamification influences behavior.  According to Bunchball, there are 120 million people are enrolled in travel rewards programs and over 200 million people play online games that are reward based (hard to believe). We see this as so important that we’ve added a session on gamification at Content Marketing World 2011. Here are four examples that Chris discussed in his presentation that we can learn from in our own content marketing. Microsoft Office PowerPoint Ribbon Hero How do you get people...

I had a great meeting this week with a former colleague who was asking about my early days at business media company Penton Media. We began recanting tales of “the good ole’ days” – before the Internet became such an important part of our lives. One particular story was about a client meeting (over a decade ago) with a large, global manufacturing company. In that meeting with the company’s lead marketing executives, we were supposed to give our guidance on the future of their market, content and advertising.  Part of the presentation included a report with these main points: In the near future, all companies will be content creators…better said, everyone will (or can be) be a publisher.  Not a publisher in the general sense, but a publisher in the sense that companies will be cultivating an audience through the consistent flow of valuable information. The difference is that non-publishers will do so for marketing purposes, not to directly gain revenue...