Big thanks to the folks at Fusionspark Media, who run the Langley Center for New Media, for making this keynote presentation (Why You Are Failing at Content Marketing and How to Fix It) available from their successful content marketing retreat a few months back. Specifically in this full presentation/video, I cover: What is content marketing? Why the barriers to entry have been lifted for non-media companies, presenting an opportunity never before available. The difference between publishers and non-publishers (an important distinction). 10 reasons why companies fail at content marketing and how to fix it. Did I miss any? Now grab a PBR and enjoy the presentation. Content Marketing Retreat Keynote Address by Joe Pulizzi from Fusionspark Media, Inc. on Vimeo.

CMI is thrilled to welcome Peter Loibl to our team to lead business development and media partnerships. Peter will serve as the Vice President/Publisher for Chief Content Officer magazine and associated CMI properties including Content Marketing Institute online and the premier content marketing event, Content Marketing World.  He will also work on expanded media partnerships through CMI’s blogging service, SocialTract.com. With more than 10 years of media experience, Peter has spent the past 5 years at Crain Communications, most recently as Senior Account Executive at BtoB magazine/online. Peter oversaw some of BtoB’s largest technology accounts and was integral in shaping the brand’s demand generation and emerging technologies initiatives. Peter also was Account Executive at American Business Media and worked on the Sports Desk of both the Columbus Dispatch and Columbus ThisWeek. Peter graduated from The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of the Arts in Journalism, and...

I went to a real swim meet yesterday for the first time. There were hundreds of adults and children there.  Almost all were swimmers…some were expert swimmers while others were just swimming. Even with all the swimmers there, the lifeguard watched over the entire event. My brother-in-law was with me and said, “I find it interesting that even though everyone here knows how to swim, there is still a lifeguard.” Some excerpts on the Wikipedia definition of a Lifeguard includes: Supervising the safety and rescue of the swimmers Training in first aid and advanced safety techniques Work with other parts of the emergency services function throughout the community The Content Marketing Lifeguard The lifeguard analogy strongly resonates with me about the need for a brand to have a Chief Content Officer. Think of it this way.  Everyone in the organization either creates or has the ability to create content (we can all swim). Everyone is at different levels of content expertise...

A social media policy is now a requirement of the Federal Trade Commission, flowing from its Guidlines on Endorsements and Testimonials. We asked the Word of Mouth Marketing Association to share the essentials. WOMMA: Essential Elements of a Social Media Policy A social media policy defines important standards of conduct for a company’s sponsored speakers, including a company’s internal speakers (employees) and external speakers (agencies or other third parties, such as bloggers). At minimum, social media policies should require that sponsored speakers: Reflect their honest beliefs, opinions or experiences; Not make objective claims about a company’s products or services without appropriate authorization; Not constitute defamatory statements; Not violate the privacy of others; Not be offensive, profane, harassing, derogatory or discriminatory; Not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others; Not constitute deceptive or misleading statements about products or services provided...

Joe Pulizzi talks to Gary Spangler, emarketing manager at DuPont, about how big brands go social while minding critical ethical and legal obligations. Joe Pulizzi: Tell me about your role at DuPont. Gary Spangler: I work to steer DuPont’s efforts around social media marketing, and do it in a way that’s transparent, honest and complies with the ethics and the growing legal requirements of the space.  J: Which social channels are you focused on? G: I look at channel descriptors and think, “Where do my content assets naturally fit?” You have to think, what can my business do best? Are we collaborative, such that networking or blogger outreach works? Do we have many photo assets, such that Flickr makes sense? You really need to pick social channels that fit your own organization. J: What advice would you share with those just getting started in social media? Are there some missteps you made that others can learn from? G: Well, the place we started, and the place I still advise people to start,...

I’ve had the opportunity to speak publicly over 300 times in the past five years. I enjoy it…and always hope the audience takes something away from the presentation. Without realizing it until recently, public speaking has been critical to helping me fine tune my online content creation skills. In this post, I’m going to give away my secret to taking the best from public speaking into your writing process. After a few speeches here and there in high school and during college, I formally started to take public speaking seriously by teaching it while at Penn State University. The best idea I can share regarding public speaking is to keep it simple. To execute that concept, I stole a page from Aristotle and taught this to my students: Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you just told them. You do two things with this method.  First, you set expectations.  The most important thing you can do to start a speech is to set expectations. For...

Okay, so you are a marketing professional interested in the practice of content marketing.  How do you keep up on the latest content marketing news? You could follow hashtags on Twitter? You could set up a Google Reader feed? You could subscribe to every marketing newsletter and pick out the best content-marketing related content? You could follow a few content marketing pundits and wait for them to share the news? Yes, these things will all work, and do work…but they are time intensive. That’s exactly the reason why the Content Marketing Institute created a dedicated Content Marketing News channel, in partnership with PR Newswire using the Curata platform. If this sounds like the right solution for you and your company, here’s how to get involved: Subscribe to Daily Email News Alerts here. Follow @thecontentnews on Twitter. See the latest news on the Content Marketing News channel itself. Let me know what you think and how we can improve the site. For more detail on how and...

Over the past decade, I’ve worked with a number of publishers and associations. One of the most underrated, but most valuable parts of both groups were the editorial advisory boards. While at Penton Media, every magazine (we called them magazines at the time, now they are just brands) had an editorial board. With hair and not wearing orange, Joe Pulizzi was featured on the cover of the spring 2000 issue of FPE magazine. During that time, I was publisher for Fire Protection Engineering magazine, the official publication of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (a 60+ year old society with over 4,000 members dedicated to the practice of fire protection engineering). The SFPE editorial advisory board was critical to the content creation that went into the magazine, the website  and the in-person events. These boards were always made up of the editor (the chief content officer) and approximately five outside experts who were either readers of the magazine or members of the association.Continue...

The Magnum Opus Awards, produced by ContentWise and McMurry, are the elite content marketing awards program.  The Content Marketing Institute was proud to help promote this program this year. The Magnum Opus Awards included more than 550 entries from around the world, representing the best in content marketing strategy, as well as a variety of print and electronic categories. Chief Content Officer magazine received the Gold award for best editorial – new publication for this year’s program.  Congratulations to the entire CCO staff for bringing this amazing publication to life. Grand Award Winners Include enRoute magazine – Spafax/Air Canada for Print Magazine, External Audience Common Thread – St. Joseph Health System for Print Magazine, Internal Audience Lexus Magazine – Lexus for Web-based publication State Fair Corn Dogs – Sara Lee Corporation for Best Video To view the entire list of winners, click here.  Congratulations to all.  

We have a unique perspective on content marketing agencies at Junta42. Since matching over 1000 content marketing projects over the past three+ years, we’ve seen our fair share and know most of the serious players in the industry. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen quite a few traditional or interactive marketing agencies disguising themselves as content agencies, as well as small freelance content creators that think they are full-service agencies. Don’t make that mistake when looking for your content partner. When determining your match with a content marketing agency, look and grade on the following criteria: Industry Content Expertise How well does the agency understand your customers and your niche industry?  Questions to ask include: Can you list the content creators on your team that have specific knowledge of our industry or have worked in our industry? (Ultimately, you’ll want to talk with them.) Do you have specific strategic and content samples that target our customer base? Strategic...

In seemingly every content marketing presentation I do, someone asks about QR Codes and why to use them. The Content Marketing Institute has some great resources for QR code implementation, including: 4 Tips to Creating and Releasing QR Codes 7 Reasons to Add QR Codes to Content Marketing Making Your Content Mobile-Friendly Specifically for destinations, there are some great ideas where you can use QR codes to extend your customer’s specific experience.  Here are three.  What can you think of? IDEA: Tell the Story Have you ever done a walking tour at a museum where they handed you a listening device for your self-guided tour?  Sometimes that is just not possible if you are Yosemite National Park. What do all your visitors have on them at all times?  Yes, a smartphone. For particular parts of the park, small signage with a QR code can take visitors to a video, blog post or additional experience that details what happened at that particular portion of the park. It’s like a...

It’s all about you. Your customers don’t care about you, they care about themselves.  We often forget that point when we describe how wonderful our widget is (that no one cares about). You are afraid to fail. Taking chances with your content and experimenting a bit reveals the possibilities for your content marketing and uncovers new customer stories. You are setting the bar too low. Your content marketing should be the very best in your industry…better than all your competition and better than the media and publishers in your space.  How can you be the trusted expert in your industry if it is not? It’s focused on tools not goals. First identify your return on objectives and coordinate the success measures (key performance indicators) for each content team. Not sourcing correctly. The majority of brands outsource some portion of the content marketing process. Don’t be afraid to find internal content champions and outside journalists, writers and content agencies...