Listened to Chris Baggott from Compendium talk yesterday at the AMA Content Marketing conference about the power of mixing social and search. Here are some stats from Chris that will get you thinking: 88% of clicks come from organic search (left side). The remaining 12% of clicks go to paid keywords (pay per click). Where are you spending more money? The fastest growing type of keyword search is a length of eight words. The type of search that converts at the highest rate is the four-word search. 80% of readers coming to your blog (on average) are first timers. 70% of searches are considered “long-tail searches” (see chart). Long-tail searches are less competitive and convert at a higher rate. Some advice: Chris suggests to take the advice from Zig Ziglar and create content around the “similar situation sale”. In other words, buyers search for information about others who are having the same problems as them. Google’s latest algorithm update places more...

First, I read this post from Seth Godin that made me think about the lost opportunity by many marketers, so focused on new media, that they forget the content marketing tactics that customers are actually engaging in.  But more on that in a second. Second, I spent the evening talking to HVAC contractors about our small-business blogging service SocialTract. I had individual conversations with over 30 owners and managers about their social media efforts (or lack there of). Across the board, these small business owners were asking about how they could leverage the bright, shiny objects such as Facebook and Twitter, but weren’t doing the blocking and tackling of content marketing.Continue reading

This article from Sports Illustrated intrigued me.  It’s a feature on Texas Ranger’s pitcher C.J. Wilson. In it, Wilson says “Talent is irrelevant…I’ve got much less natural talent than lots of other pitchers…I wasn’t even the best player on my Little League team.” Wilson says what counts the most is “…perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire”. This is just one lone example.  Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs and others come to mind as well. I would dare say that the single most important characteristic of successful content marketers (individuals and brands) is perseverance. Do you know of any great bloggers that haven’t, time after time, consistently delivered? Seth Godin, Copyblogger, Lee Odden, Mack Collier…they all deliver. Not all of the posts are diamonds, but the collection of singles and doubles throughout the years have led to world series titles for each of them. The...

I read this announcement with pleasure about Hubspot’s recent investment from Google Ventures, Sequoia and Salesforce. Congratulations to them. The last point from Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan is critical for not just business owners, but content marketers. It Is A Go Big Or Go Home World We Live In – I learned in b-school that the natural state of most industries is an oligopoly where there a number of players with smaller than 50% of the market. Since the internet, we believe we have moved into a winner-take-all world where the market leader in a new industry gets 80%+ of the market cap in their industry, like Google (search), Salesforce (CRM), Groupon (group buying), VMWare (virtualization), etc. We believe we have a head start in an important new industry, so we are hitting the gas to try be that winner who takes all. This is EXACTLY the way you have to think about your content marketing creation or distribution.Continue reading

Well, the world of content marketing is getting a whole lot busier these days, including some things you may or may not know about. For this post, I wanted to make sure everyone was updated on the latest content marketing treats.  Thanks to our amazing content marketing team and contributors for making much of this possible. Google Move Great for Content Marketers.  I’m working on a story for BtoB magazine on this, but the early prognosis is that Google’s algorithm changes are a boon for content marketers.  More to come. Content Marketing Awards deadline in two weeks. The Magnum Opus awards (which I like to call the content marketing awards) are approaching their deadline on March 18th.  Be sure to get your content projects in ASAP. Content Marketing comes to South by Southwest.  NPR host Tom Ashbrook will moderate this panel on how brands are becoming publishers. Updated Speaker Lineup for Content Marketing World 2011. Check out the additions here – we’ve added...

Here’s 10…how many do you have? Here we go… Selfish content marketing.  People don’t care about you, they care about themselves.  Create content that solves customers’ pain points. Stop talking about yourself, your products, your services.  If you do, make it about your customers. The back burner. There is no back burner.  If there is content marketing creation or adaptation that is on the back burner, it wasn’t important enough to do in the first place. In the words of Yoda, “Do or do not…there is no try“. No point of view. In order to position yourself as an expert in your industry, you need a point of view. Take a stance. Walking the fence is boring and, more importantly, usually doesn’t work. Lack of push. Is your content taking your customers to new places? Solve your customers’ pain points, and then take them to places they haven’t been to or seen before. That’s thought leadership. No process. I see it...

I participated in a prep call today for our South by Southwest panel called “Debating Brands Roles as Publishers” (Saturday, March 12th, 9:30am, Ballroom F). The panel includes Tom Ashbrook from NPR, Lora Kolodny from TechCrunch, blogger and journalist Gary Kim, HiveFire CEO Pawan Deshpande and yours truly. For those of you going to the event, get ready for a lively debate.  There was some interesting discussion about the idea that trained journalists who work for brands (non-media companies) can’t really be called journalists.  That once journalists take off their public service mandate and move to the “dark side,” they are no longer journalists, but just writers or copywriters.Continue reading

The majority of my posts are hopefully either thought provoking or instructional…this one could be both or neither.  Maybe you’ll have a little fun with me on this AtoZ content marketing journey.  If you have any of your own, please add them with the highlighter tool. Association Have you considered starting a for-profit association/ learning center / institute as part of your content marketing? Here’s one example. Blogging Can be the center of your content marketing universe. Here are 10 blogging tips for beginners and experts to get you started. Content Marketing World The largest content marketing event…don’t miss it. BONUS: C for the Chemistry of Content (my wife’s favorite post). C for Calendar.  Here’s how to put one together.Continue reading

Had the pleasure of listening to Pawan Deshpande, CEO of HiveFire, yesterday at the Content Marketing Strategies conference (I will be speaking on a panel with Pawan at SXSW and he will also be speaking at Content Marketing World). Pawan discussed the five steps to content curation and I wanted to share them with you here.Continue reading

Why is an influencer strategy so important? 1. It can help drive your social media execution. 2. It can be a core part of your search engine optimization strategy. 3. Ultimately, if done correctly, it will drive sales and position your organization as one of the leading experts in the field. There is no right way to developing and cultivating relationships with the influencers in your industry, but here are 10 steps to get you started in the right direction. Step 1: Create your buyer persona Have a clear understanding of who you are trying to attract to your website and what you ultimately want them to do. Here are some key articles on helping you with your buyer persona. Buyer Personas to Bring Targets to Life The Anatomy of a Great Web Persona (Touchpoint Persona) The Discovery Phase of Content Strategy How to Determine Your Buyer Personas?Continue reading

Year 2000: I started working in the custom publishing business doing account management work – producing custom magazines and newsletters (mostly print) for B2B brands. Year 2001: First used the term “content marketing” while I was Penton Media (the largest independent trade media company in North America).  Didn’t catch on at all. Year 2004: 776 – Number of search returns for “content marketing” in Google. “Custom publishing” nets 64,100 during the same period.Continue reading

Yes, Angry Birds has hit the Pulizzi household.  We love all the birds…red ones, yellow ones and even the blue ones that split into three birds. As you move through the game levels, the key is to understand that each bird has a particular role.  For example, the light blue one that splits into three birds is perfect for breaking glass.  The yellow one?  It takes out wood.  The bloated red one tears through just about anything. What does this have to do with content marketing? Everything. Besides Angry Birds being one awesome example of content marketing as a business, the birds can tell us a lot about online content. One Content Tactic Is Not Enough I had a few email/twitter conversations with some of the attendee’s from yesterday’s Blogging Success Summit presentation about expanding outside the blog. Most of the bloggers made it to a certain point in their online strategy and plateaued, never moving beyond the blog post. You see, for online content marketing to work,...