Last week, a member of a private Facebook group comprised of social media professionals asked if anyone could supply a list of influential event marketers. So far, only two names have been suggested. Yet in the past 90 seconds, I identified 297. Or, more accurately, Little Bird, a newly launched start-up founded by former ReadWriteWeb editor Marshall Kirkpatrick, did.

Little Bird is essentially a search engine for influencers, but unlike services such as Klout that assign a “reputation score” to people, Kirkpatrick’s tool starts with a topic and, based on Byzantine connections throughout the social graph surrounding the issue, works backward to the “insiders” who are most influential about that particular subject. Continue Reading

While the concept of content marketing — that is, making the small yet difficult shift from thinking like a seller to thinking like a buyer — may be disruptive, the practice itself has a very common analog: product marketing.

That’s right, when you get right down to it, the process of marketing your content draws heavily from the process of marketing your products.Continue Reading

The shift is on. It’s hard to read an article or attend a presentation about social media or content marketing without the subject quickly transitioning from creative or strategy to measurement — and often with an eye on the ultimate prize: ROI (Return On Investment).

Ostensibly, this is a good thing. After all, it suggests that our industry has outgrown its “cottage” status and moved into the big house. But in our rush to “be measured like everyone else,” content marketers are in danger of shortchanging their full value to the organization.

Let’s look at four hidden benefits of content marketing that will never show up on the CMO’s dashboard but can bring immense value to the company and its internal relationships.

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There may be a curated list of content marketing “thought leaders” that skews female, but I sure haven’t seen one.

Case in point: I was recently invited to participate in series of posts that brought together 29 influential content marketers. When the blog posts — and subsequent eBook — featuring my contributions ran, I was shocked at the imbalance. Of the 29 “brilliant minds,” only four were women. Four!

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Content marketing is lunch pail work. It wears a blue collar and sometimes even a dirty blue collar. It’s the guy with callused hands in the boardroom. That’s because content marketing is for doers. After all, who has the time to sit around “thought leading” when there is so much coal to shovel onto the fire?

Believe me. I know.  I run content marketing, and I have the blisters to prove it.

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Let’s start with a challenge: Without mentioning other colors, describe the color orange. Seriously, try it. Go on.

Impossible, right?

Now imagine describing not only what an infographic is but also what makes a good one. Because it’s uniquely difficult to do this in the abstract, examples are key. So let’s channel our inner Jack Klugman (Quincy, anyone?) and perform an autopsy on a recent infographic, dissecting it to see what worked, what could have been improved, and what features might have made it truly epic.

For this exercise, let’s examine “The 50 Richest People on Earth,” a popular infographic published by CreditLoan this past summer.Continue Reading

We’ve all heard of the 80/20 rule. You know, the one that states 20 percent of causes are responsible for 80 percent of results. For example, 80 percent of support calls are placed by 20 percent of users; 80 percent of speeding tickets are “explained” by the same 20 percent of excuses; or its original application, 80 percent of wealth is controlled by 20 percent of the population. You get the idea.

Whether you are in technology, law enforcement or economics, you aren’t immune to the 80/20 rule. Content marketers are no different.

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Fifteen minutes might just be the perfect length for a presentation. It forces the speaker to focus on the essentials, and it’s over before the audience’s minds begin to wander. When I present, How to Create Attention, Interest and Sales with Infographics at next month’s Content Marketing World, I’ll have just that: 15 minutes to help the audience better understand what is quickly becoming one of the most popular content marketing formats — the infographic.Continue Reading