Like it or not, the ranks of traditional print journalists are shrinking at an astounding rate. The Pew-funded State of the News Media report for 2010 reveals that “roughly a third of the newsroom jobs in American newspapers in 2001 are now gone.” That’s a staggering figure. For business journalists,...

In last week’s post, I walked you through how to map your content to your buyer personas and sales funnel. By having this information, you can start to see where your gaps in content are. So, what’s next? You need to fill in the gaps and put a plan in place to measure what is and isn’t...

The recent Business Marketing Association conference in Chicago was focused on engagement.  The leading marketers from around the world came together to talk about it…and how engagement is the key to success for your brand and your customers. The overwhelming takeaway was this…while customer...

You probably think of Thomas Edison as a great innovator, but did you know he was also a brilliant marketer? He foresaw the creation and evolution of markets, and he worked passionately to bring his beliefs to life. While Edison didn’t use content marketing as we know it today to spread his ideas, there...

How is writing for your business blog different from any other business marketing content? In general, the goal of a business blog is to provide relevant, useful information to your targeted audience. By doing so, you create a community of loyal readers and engage their interest in your business. A few...

If you’re a B2B marketer you’ve inevitably heard sales say things like this: “Yeah, we’re getting leads from all that content you guys in marketing are writing – but they’re all tire kickers.” Or (my favorite): “We don’t need more leads. . . we need better leads.”  What now? You want to be...

There’s a very important line at the beginning of the movie The Godfather II. Just after Michael Corleone, The Godfather (played by Al Pacino) gets shot at, he sits down his brother Tom Hagan and talks about an important lesson from his father. One thing I learned from my father is to try to think...

You want to get your content marketing initiative off to a great start. No, a fantastic start! A ground-breaking, revolutionary, epic launch. Something that will bring in the leads like the Pied Piper and bring on the tears of your competitors like the end of Beaches (or maybe that’s just me…) Hold up!...

We’ve all heard the expression, “don’t sweat the small stuff”, right? It’s strategic advice reminding us not to get diverted by inconsequential activity. The great thing about content marketing is, sometimes, the small things can produce big results. A large part of marketing includes reading and keeping...

Remember when Hamlet said, “The play’s the thing…?” He had just come to the realization that he could use his ingenious content (his play) to gauge the reaction of his audience (King Claudius) in order to determine if the king was guilty of murder. For the most part you’re not likely using your content...

The whole idea of ”targeting” is an odd practice. As marketers we spend so much time and effort, trying to narrow down who our customers are into an age range, a gender, a geographical location, a household income, that type of thing. Then we end up calling it a target, and wringing our hands about just...

I’m really excited to announce the launch of the Content Marketing Institute (CMI). The idea of CMI is simple – while there are a lot of great blogs, books and experts out there in and around content marketing, there are still so many questions. How do I develop a content marketing strategy? How...