SlideShare’s quick rise to prominence caught content marketers off their guards. Now, some of the world’s biggest brands (including GE, IBM, and HP, among others) consider it a top content distribution channel. So, how did an upstart presentation engine crack the top 150 most visited websites in the world? The secret is in the search itself.Continue Reading

Your content should move your audience. A hot web design strategy — parallax scrolling — combines depth and motion to provide a visual content technique that does just that.

Parallax scrolling is a technique where multiple focal points move at different paces as you scroll a website. Imagine a background, middle ground, and foreground, each element moving at a different pace as you move up, down, or side-to-side on a page.Continue Reading

Making LinkedIn a key part of your content distribution strategy? You now have an additional opportunity to put content in front of more eyes.

LinkedIn launched its Sponsored Updates program this summer. It’s the professional network’s early foray into truly native advertising.Continue Reading

How can you know if your content marketing is pushing the right buttons if you aren’t testing it?

You can’t. Without testing, you’re missing a vital frame of reference — how one piece of content performs against others. This key piece of information helps you better understand which of your content pieces are hitting the right mark, and where you need to focus your content optimization efforts in order to increase your content marketing success.Continue Reading

To gate or not to gate? The age-old marketing question about gated content has been particularly subject to fluctuating public and professional opinion over the last decade or so.

“We’re seeing more marketers trying to shift the balance to increase the amount of earned leads through participating in the conversation with ungated content,” says Mike Weir, Marketing Lead for LinkedIn’s technology sector. “It’s especially important to keep your top of funnel content open and discoverable. It’s like dating, you want people to find you interesting and say, ‘I like your point of view. Let’s schedule a time to talk.’ It’s the essence of content marketing — and the reason the cold callers will eventually become extinct.” Continue Reading

I don’t have to tell you that content marketing has exploded into a global practice across hundreds of industries. That’s why you’re here on the Content Marketing Institute blog — to learn how you can get better at creating useful content to drive sales and promote your brand.

Content marketing’s reach may be broad, but its practices are varied. Some organizations already have a good content creation system in place; others are still trying to understand how they can best integrate content marketing into their existing marketing departments. Continue Reading

Finding that your content often falls flat? You may have a harmony problem.

Without a strong composer, a piece of content can strike dissonant chords with your audience.Continue Reading

The difference between a conversation that happens naturally versus one that’s forced is astounding. As a content marketer, which side are you on?

Content marketing is moving away from the “fixed schedule” model into a hybrid approach that uses data to determine well-timed content delivery. After all, content sharing and engagement are much more dynamic than they were a few years ago.Continue Reading