One of the goals of content marketing is to constantly provide your customers with educational and relevant content so you can be the go-to resource for their questions on a certain topic. Consumers are smart. They won’t believe you if you tell them you are fantastic. You need to prove it. How? By being...

For his skill in anticipating and fulfilling consumer appetite, Henry Ford was the Steve Jobs of the early 20th century. Savvy and a bit cocky, Ford famously patted himself on the back: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, ‘faster horses.’ ” Over 100 years after...

I spent my lunch hour today enjoying this video from Jason Calacanis about entrepreneurship. Toward the beginning of the video, Jason makes this comment: There are two types of people: Entrepreneurs and everyone else. Jason then goes on to talk about how entrepreneurs are Samurai’s and that people...

As much as its advocates hate to admit it, sometimes content marketing fails – or more accurately, sometimes people fail at content marketing. Consistency is key, because without consistency, you can’t gain momentum, and without momentum, content marketing success is a long shot, at best. Without...

Keyword research is a critical piece of creating an effective content strategy. By using the right keywords, you’ll increase the visibility of your content and drive even more traffic to your website. But how do you find the best keywords for your audience?Continue reading

For years, marketing departments of all shapes and sizes have built teams of individuals charged with the task of reaching audiences. But the tasks of marketing have changed in recent years. To reference the Cluetrain Manifesto, the markets themselves have become conversations. So the question is this:...

Last fall, OpenView Venture Partners invited Joe Pulizzi and a few other content marketing experts to organize a workshop on content marketing for our portfolio companies.  Our portfolio companies weren’t the only ones taking notes.  After hearing the experts, we were sold.  We jumped right into a content...

This cost of content marketing post was inspired by Kate Headen Waddell’s post entitled Pay Peanuts Get Monkeys. At least one time per day, every day for three years, someone emails us at Junta42 or submits a project looking for a content vendor wondering how much content marketing (both print...

As content marketing takes off in the B2B world, more and more brands will be building significant content libraries. That’s fantastic but it does create new challenges for the content marketer. In the early days of content marketing, we were all focused on one piece at a time. Write an e-book, promote...

Finding the right tone and voice for your audience isn’t always easy. Sometimes, finding an analogy, a case study or even a local reference that will engage your audience can mean the difference between an effective piece of content and just another article. That’s where a deep understanding of your...

Before I launched my business, I read the Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin.  It was and is invaluable. Every year or so, I dig it out of the file folders and re-read it.  I always find something new…something I didn’t realize the last time through. But every time, this is the statement...

If you believe that your prospects don’t want to receive email from you, then you are missing a huge opportunity. HubSpot looked at data from 605 business blogs and found that they got 12 times more email subscribers than RSS subscribers on average. What your prospects don’t want is promotional...