In an age of such tremendous transparency with Glassdoor, Facebook, and other networks, you’ve come to a point where you are telling your story 24 hours a day. There’s a big dialogue going on. So you can let it happen to you or you can participate in it.

• Kathy Button Bell, chief marketing officer, Emerson

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One of the keys to thought leadership-based communications on a global scale is to make relevant points that are focused on specific audiences that happen to be operating in a global environment.

• Patty Brown

While content marketing may seem like an easier endeavor for large brands because they have bigger budgets, they actually are more challenged with every aspect of content marketing. A key reason: It’s tough to scale efforts across an organization while keeping the content relevant and consistent across so many geographies, industries, and personas.Continue Reading

Our goal is not necessarily to keep users engaged within our website, but instead to try to move them from the web to email or phone because that’s where the sale is going to happen.

• Vishal Khanna, Wake Forest Innovations in MarketingSherpa

With only 21% of B2B marketers saying they are successful at tracking content marketing ROI, it’s inspiring to see success in an unexpected (even perceived as stodgy) environment: academic medical centers. We’re proud to share the story of Wake Forest Innovations, the commercialization arm for Wake Forest University and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. I was fortunate to speak with its Director of Marketing and Business Development, Vishal Khanna, who is a finalist for Content Marketer of the Year. (Editor’s Update: Vishal was named Content Marketer of the Year at Content Marketing World.)Continue Reading

It’s no longer about brand-first. It’s about giving consumers content that adds value to their lives, and in return adds value to us.

• David Beebe in an interview for Contently

Influencer marketing is a popular strategy for B2C content marketers, but none have approached it with a more solid foundation and open mind than Marriott. In the past, influencer marketing was focused on the appeal well-known celebrities could establish with their endorsements, but this has evolved.Continue Reading

One of the areas of content publishing that has become voluminous over the last few years is research studies. Whatever you want to know about what marketers are doing, you can find out. Not that research studies are always representative, but when hundreds, or even thousands, of marketers agree on a certain premise, it’s worth considering.

However, lately I’ve seen research studies that are concerning. When I look at the sentiments these studies reflect, and the questions they raise about our industry, I get a bit queasy thinking about whether our profession is as advanced as it should be. I get a sense of inertia — of doing the same things we’ve always done but expecting different results — that makes me wonder if we’re really making progress now that continuous change has become, well, a constant.Continue Reading

[Editor’s note: Happy Holidays! This week, the editorial team at Content Marketing Institute wanted to share some of the best content marketing blog posts we’ve seen from the CMI Online Training and Certification program’s roster of expert instructors. Today’s post originally appeared on Ardath Albee’s Marketing Interactions blog on February 9, 2013.]

Many of the projects I do for companies start with buyer personas. After all, it’s a logical place to start, as it’s next to impossible to develop a content strategy without a keen understanding of the people involved in buying complex B2B product offerings. But I’m noticing a trend I hadn’t foreseen:

Marketers are keeping buyer personas in the closet. Yep, it’s true.Continue Reading

[Editor’s note: Happy Holidays! This week, the editorial team at Content Marketing Institute wanted to share some of the best content marketing blog posts we’ve seen from the experts who have developed classes for the CMI Online Training and Certification program. Today’s post originally appeared on Ardath Albee’s Marketing Interactions blog on October 14, 2013

Think like a publisher! That’s been the rallying cry for B2B content marketing for the last few years. But, I’d like to submit that content marketing takes a whole lot more than publishing — especially for B2B companies with complex sales.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately from B2B marketers who are saying, “We bought into the idea of content marketing. We’ve created great content. It’s getting read. But it’s not moving the needle.”Continue Reading

[Editor’s note: Happy Holidays! This week, the editorial team at Content Marketing Institute wanted to share some of the best content marketing blog posts we’ve seen from our CMI Consultants. Today’s post originally appeared on Ardath Albee’s blog, Marketing Interactions, on May 13, 2012.]

One of the mandates bandied about lately is that B2B marketers need to become listeners. They should set up listening posts and they must listen first, before launching marketing programs. You’re told listening is a requisite for establishing two-way dialogue and sustaining relationships across the buying process. If you’ve “listened” to all of this, then you know that listening informs (or should) how marketers respond to prospects’ online behavior.

Anyone who is married or in a relationship can relate to “listening.” Trust me, I’ve been married to a wonderful Italian man for 16 years, and it’s not so much what’s being said, but what it means, that counts.

This is great and dandy for one-on-one relationships, or even among small groups of people, family and friends. But what happens when you’re a B2B marketer with thousands of contacts in your database? How the heck do you manage listening to that level of volume? In other words, the input of a few will not necessarily correlate to the wishes or intentions of the many. Continue Reading