Joshua Nite

Next-Gen Lead Gen: How to Refine Your Marketing to Get More B2B Leads

Joshua Nite on Dec 3rd, 2018 Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

A few days ago, I was watching a 2005 episode of Doctor Who with my nine-year-old. He saw a strange artifact in a character’s hand. “What’s that thing?” he asked.

“An iPod,” I responded. “It’s like a smartphone, but it could only play music and had a black-and-white screen. No, no touchscreen. It held a LOT of music, though! Like hundreds of CDs! Okay, so a CD is…”

The point being: You kids need to get off my lawn.

Okay, the actual point being: Technology has changed fast in the past decade, and what used to be mind-blowing is now laughably obsolete. That’s doubly true in B2B marketing. We have the tools and tech to do amazing, iPhone-XS-Max-quality B2B lead generation.

Next-Gen Lead Gen: How to Refine Your Marketing to Get More B2B Leads

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5 Content Marketing Shortcuts That Cost You in the Long Run

You know what they call a shortcut that actually saves time?

The route.

That was the wisdom my dad gave me the first time we went hiking together. Sometimes when you look at the map, it looks like there’s a better path. But the route is the route for a reason. Chasing a shortcut feels like making progress — but it might not get you to the trail’s end.

Marketers dig shortcuts. Or, as we call them, “hacks.” It makes sense: We’re usually overworked, understaffed, and expected to work wonders. A content marketing hack promises to cut a straight line through a tedious process, increasing efficiency and boosting results.

5 Content Marketing Shortcuts That Cost You in the Long Run

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20 More Dumb Jokes for Smart Marketers

Joshua Nite on Oct 30th, 2018 B2B Marketing

A great pun is like a great digital marketing campaign: If you do it right, it will stick with people until they’re compelled to share it — even the simplest ones require a level of sophistication to make and to appreciate.

Every marketer I know is incredibly smart — whether it’s my team at TopRank Marketing, the influencers and thought leaders we work with, or the folks I’ve met at marketing conventions. Marketers are sharp, detail-oriented, intellectually rigorous, and susceptible to flattery.

So, if you’re a smart digital or content marketer, take a break from your challenging, rewarding work and enjoy these jokes. And remember: If your colleagues don’t laugh, they’re just not as sophisticated as you.

20 More Dumb Jokes for Smart Marketers

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2019 B2B Content Marketing Trends: The 10 Biggest Opportunities for Marketers

Joshua Nite on Oct 10th, 2018 B2B Marketing, Content Marketing

For content marketers, each year’s publication of the B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends Report should be truly exciting. Even more than the latest iPhone announcement. In fact, especially more than the latest iPhone announcement.

Don’t get me wrong: I love a slightly bigger screen, creepy new camera features and a higher price tag as much as the next guy. But the annual report from Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs can actually make marketers better at our jobs.

The 2019 edition has officially been released, and there are plenty of thought-provoking stats in just the first couple of pages; high-level attributes of top performers and clear opportunities for improvement.

2019 B2B Content Marketing Trends: The 10 Biggest Opportunities for Marketers

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Is Anybody Out There? How to Get More Eyes On Your Blog Content

Joshua Nite on Sep 26th, 2018 Blog Marketing, Blogging Strategy, Content Marketing

What’s more important than creating great blog content? What’s more important than writing with empathy, storytelling, and research? What’s more important than even knowing your audience better than they know themselves?

Amplification.

Stay with me. If you’re a content marketing writer like me, amplification is the less sexy part of the job. The rewarding part, the part that matters, is writing that amazing, useful content. I’d much rather build glittering cathedrals of words that compel people to read by the sheer power of my prose.

The trouble is, there are thousands of people out there writing amazing blogs. There is a ton of wonderful, beautiful pieces of content out there. And the only way people will find your blog is if you bring them to it. Without amplification built into your content marketing strategy, your blog is a diamond buried five miles beneath the surface of the earth. It’s pretty! It’s valuable! But it’s not doing anyone any good.

Is Anybody Out There? How to Get More Eyes On Your Blog Content

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How to Build a Resilient Evergreen Content Marketing Forest

Joshua Nite on Aug 8th, 2018 Content Marketing, Digital Marketing

Evergreen trees are a symbol of life and renewal because they never lose their leaves; they stay green year-round.

Tell that to anyone who has dragged a Christmas tree to the garbage on New Year’s Day.

The truth is, evergreen trees are part of an ecosystem. When they’re rooted and cared for, they thrive and the whole forest benefits. Cut one down and take it home, and it won’t be green for long.

Evergreen content is the same way. We tend to think of it as stand-alone pieces of content that bring in traffic without any additional effort. Something isolated, set-it-and-forget-it. But if you treat your content that way, it will start dropping needles on the carpet with a quickness.

How to Build a Resilient Evergreen Content Marketing Forest

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What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?

Joshua Nite on Jul 16th, 2018 B2B Marketing, B2C Marketing, Content Marketing

Have you heard the good news about quality content? It’s the latest innovation that’s sweeping the nation. It’s going to revolutionize your content marketing efforts. If your current strategy is to crank out crappy content, then quality content is going to blow your KPIs away!

Okay, sarcasm aside: Every content marketer knows their content needs to be good to be effective. We call it “quality,” or “value,” or “usefulness.” But all of these traits can vary widely depending on your audience. For example, conventional wisdom might say that 500-word blog posts don’t connect with readers. But that word count may be just the right length for the people you want to reach.

So, when we get into the specifics, quality is relative and highly subjective. But it’s possible to define quality content marketing in a more universal way:

What Does ‘Quality’ Really Mean in Content Marketing?

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Beyond the Hype Cycle: It’s Time to Redefine Influencer Marketing

Joshua Nite Influencer Marketing

Every marketer should consider getting a tattoo of Gartner’s Hype Cycle, as a reminder to keep us from chasing shiny objects.

The Hype Cycle goes like this:

A new hotness emerges. It could be new technology, a new strategy or tactic, some new thing.
There are wild predictions about how the thing will revolutionize the world.
People scramble to get on board with the thing before they even understand it.
The new thing doesn’t measure up to elevated expectations.
People get disillusioned with the thing and decide it’s worthless.
People actually learn how the thing works, get sophisticated in using it.
The thing turns out to be pretty awesome and is used productively.

Beyond the Hype Cycle: It’s Time to Redefine Influencer Marketing

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Marketers, Assemble! The Super-Powered Team-Up of Content Marketing Confluence

Joshua Nite Content Marketing

It’s been a spectacular decade to be a nerd. The superheroes we love leaped from the page to the multiplex, each movie connected to the rest with the kind of complex storytelling we love in comic books.

It started with Iron Man in 2008. This weekend, “Avengers: Infinity War” hits theaters, with over two dozen heroes throwing down against a celestial being with godlike powers (who, for some reason, has a chin that looks like a raisin).

The California Raisins reboot looks really dark.

I’m pretty stoked.

Team-up events like this are great because a superhero team is always more powerful than the sum of its parts. They can use their powers to complement each other in unexpected ways:

Marketers, Assemble! The Super-Powered Team-Up of Content Marketing Confluence

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Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus

Joshua Nite Facebook, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Advertising, Twitter

Social media marketers, how are you feeling? Take a minute to breathe if you need to. The last few months have been a wild ride. Fatigue, vertigo, and even a little nausea are perfectly understandable.

As I said before, social media isn’t dying, but it is changing. Marketers are used to quick changes, naturally, but it’s important to be sure we’re making the right changes. We should approach evolving our social media with the same data-driven, strategic rigor that applies to everything else we do.

The good folks at Rival IQ recently published their 2018 Social Media Benchmarking Report. The data points to some clear directions for the next evolution of social media marketing.

Here are some of the key data points – and, more importantly, what you should do about them.

Social Media Marketing Benchmarks: What Works & Where to Focus

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B2B Podcasting: What, Why and How

Joshua Nite B2B Marketing, Podcasting

Okay, B2B marketers, time for a pop quiz:

Which content marketing tactic can hold an audience’s attention for a half hour or more at a time?
Which tactic inspires an audience to subscribe to your content and make a regular appointment to consume it?
Which tactic can help boost thought leadership, raise awareness and engage influencers in your industry?
Which tactic is in the title of this blog post?

The answer, of course, is podcasting. These long-form audio programs first emerged in the early 2000s. Back then, they were a niche format for hobbyists and tech nerds (like me). But the rise of the smartphone brought podcasts to the masses. Now, there are hundreds of hours of programming available on every conceivable subject, in every genre from true crime to horror to musical. But we haven’t hit content shock for podcasts — it’s still a growing market.

B2B Podcasting: What, Why and How

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