I’ve had a number of clients tell me, “I looked in my Analytics for about three hours yesterday and it was really cool, but I don’t know what I learned.” Do you suffer from from ERH (Eyes Rolling into Head) when you look at the multitude of reports in analytics? Most marketers...

The  Content Marketing Institute (CMI) today announced the launch of their strategy consulting practice dedicated to the emerging category of content marketing strategy and editorial services.  The practice is focused on helping organizations of all sizes address the opportunity for original content...

Okay quick – how many marketing consultants does it take to change a light bulb?  There is no shortage of punch lines here.   “It depends – how large is your budget?”  Or – “We don’t know – they never seem to get past the requirements stage.”  Or, here’s my favorite (maybe because I made it up) – “Four,...

I know nothing about the company that produced this video. After watching the video, I’m compelled to find out more about them. Now that’s content marketing! Thanks to Bob Leonard from acSellerant for calling this out.  It’s worth the time.

Are you developing buyer personas for your B2B content marketing efforts? A number of CMI contributors have tackled the topic of personas because it’s one of the most important things you can do. Those posts do a great job helping you get started, but today I want to answer some questions I frequently...

Marketing budgets are growing for most companies, but so are the requirements to reach more empowered, skeptical and frugal buyers via more channels. How can you know that the content you invest in will forge effective connections and engagements that will ultimately lead to incremental sales? To help...

Most marketers we work with want to develop a content marketing program driven, in part, by user-generated content (UGC). They believe that if they can only get their prospects and customers to talk about their brands online in blogs, forums and review sites, all their woes will disappear. And in almost...

I recently had the pleasure of attending a TEDx event. Many of my clients, friends and tweeps were interested in the content, so I told them I would tweet live from the event. However, ten minutes into the first talk, I realized I was missing too much of the presentation and gave up on tweeting.Continue...

Closed-loop marketing is the process by which market intelligence learned during a marketing campaign is fed back into the strategy and plan. This can result in more focused targeting, more effective messaging and improved resonance of your marketing content. Until the past couple of years, closed-loop...

I had the pleasure of presenting at a recent PR Newswire sales meeting where they discussed their new ARC Engagement Platform [disclaimer: PR Newswire is a Content Marketing Institute benefactor]. One of the samples came from Rodale Custom Content & Marketing and Curves International (see below as...

We are all looking for the silver bullet that will make our content sparkle. What if from the time of content creation we already had the benchmarks in place that we know forms valuable content? Yesterday, I introduced the Creating Valuable Content Checklist, which I use to quantify what makes content...

To help you manage the execution details of your content marketing, use this Creating Valuable Content Checklist.