Online Marketing Blog

(Image credit: @aaronnak)

George Carlin famously said, the goal of human beings is to acquire stuff, then to store it somewhere.

Unfortunately, many businesses have treated their corporate content the same way, as stuff to be acquired, and used their websites, blogs, and social channels as the places to store it.

‘If we only talk about ourselves, we’ll never reach customers’ says the always entertaining Joe Pulizzi in his packed-room presentation at Social Media Marketing World 2014.

The answer to this pathological content hoarding problem is content marketing, or at least it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, many businesses are not following important content marketing best practices and are seeing disappointing results because of it. According to research from Content Marketing Institute, 90% of businesses today are engaging in content marketing, but only 45% report it to be effective.

When Joe Pulizzi first contacted me to talk about his first book, Get Content, Get Customers, the conversation and ensuing connection over the following years proved to be a positive and productive influence on my approach to digital marketing.

Even if this blog wasn’t named the #1 content marketing blog three times by Junta42, our involvement with events like Content Marketing World as a speaker, media sponsor and creator of the Speaker EBooks (Content Marketing Secrets and Content Marketing Rocks!) would still have manifested in one way or another. Joe has been an incredible influence on many and has made a significant impact on the quality of marketing found within many major brands.

Companies large and small are investing in content creation now, more than ever. Whether the investment in content marketing supports branding, sales, customer service, PR or recruiting, there are specific audiences and brand messages involved.

Kudos to companies making the effort to create more useful content to help answer customer questions. But what good is investing in all that content if it’s not easy to find and share?

Search is a direct expression of intent and what better time for your useful content to be available than at your customers’ moment of need? It’s the perfect time of course, so companies pumping out content without amplification are literally throwing money away.

Managing Content Marketing by Robert Rose & Joe Pulizzi

There are certain books that I find myself recommending to folks on our team and to people I meet at conferences over and over again. These are books I purchase multiple copies of (I give them away and they also seem to disappear).

One book in particular that fits this situation is Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi.

Sure, Robert and Joe are two of the smartest and nicest people I know, but this book really does deserve to be required reading for any organization investing in content to grow their business.

Here’s why:

In a recent study by Content Marketing Institute, it was reported that 54% of B2B marketers will increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months. Pouring more money into content doesn’t automatically result in success.

As with wise investing for financial success, marketers need to back up their content investments with a plan, resources, goals, measurement and many other answers to questions their competition aren’t bothering with.

This doesn’t mean you need some grand, perfect strategy to see a return on content development spend. But it does mean having a clear vision and approach. To help guide you in this content marketing journey, here’s advice from some of the top content marketers in the industry including pros from Intel, SAP, Kraft, and the Content Marketing Institute.

TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has partnered with Joe Pulizzi and the upcoming Content Marketing World conference to help promote the event and sessions by doing a series of interviews and creating an eBook: “The Secrets of Content Marketing and the Undercover Agents Who Shared Them”.

Successful content marketing that works efficiently, effectively and that can scale is a very big secret for a lot of companies. This series of interview posts and the eBook will shine a light on what some of the top brands (Intel, Kraft, SAS, Cisco, Ricoh, Kelly Services, SAP and more) and thought leaders (Jason Falls, Joe Pulizzi, Robert Rose, Michael Stelzner, Ardath Albee, Ann Handley, Jim Kukral, Mark Schaefer and more) have up their sleeves (or on a microdot).

Content Marketing World, We Found A Home

This recent video from Content Marketing Institute Founder Joe Pulizzi, provides some background into how Content Marketing World came to be.  If you are big or small brand, B2B, B2C, or virtually any organization that creates content this conference is for you.  Scheduled this year for Sept 4-6 in Columbus, Content Marketing World is now the largest content marketing conference in the world. TopRank is proud to be one of 4 exclusive media sponsors along with Copyblogger Media, Social Media Examiner and SmartBusiness Content Marketing.

Forget Big Brother – What About Giant Google?
Last week Google released its full FCC report which contained information about data collection from unsecured Wi-Fi connections.  It appears that Google’s Street View cars were not only taking photos of streets, but were also intercepting email and SMS traffic.  Read more to see what else Google has up their sleeve.  Via Forbes.

If you are part of the online marketing or content marketing industry you have undoubtably heard of Joe Pulizzi (@juntajoe) and his company the Content Marketing Institute (CMI).  Joe has been a member of the content marketing community for over a decade, and has made it his mission to help brands create quality content and distribute that content through multiple online channels.   This was my first time seeing Joe speak and he made it a great interactive experience, and was of course wearing his trademark Orange.

I enjoyed the history that Joe shared with the audience as well as his practical tactical tips that can be implemented by an organization of any size.  However, I think the true takeaway is determining a way to differentiate yourself from your peers and your competition.

[Note from Lee: The next in our series of Wednesday guest posts comes from no less than the Godfather of Content Marketing, Joe Pulizzi. I’ve known Joe since he published his first book, Get Content Get Customers, and have been amazed at his relentless efforts to lead the charge towards better marketing.

What I like best about Joe is that he’s a “Walk the Talk” content marketer with Junta42, Chief Content Officer magazine and the largest annual content marketing event, Content Marketing World. Joe is also co-author of Get Content Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing plus he writes a content marketing blog.  For this post Joe focuses on what businesses need to know about smarter planning for content marketing into the coming year.

Content Marketing is a hot, hot topic right now as are social media, mobile and local.  Along with being a popular focus for marketers, there’s really a deluge of information being published and it’s not always clear what the best advice is.

The recent kudos for TopRank’s Online Marketing blog in the areas of Content Marketing (#1 on Junta42 list) and Social Media Marketing (#2 on Social Media Examiner list), made me remember what a great network of smart, accomplished, “walk the talk” content marketers I get to connect with.  So, I reached out to a few of the people I respect most in these areas to share a single tip on Content Marketing for the benefit of readers trying to make sense of where it might fit in their mix: