For more than a decade, I helped develop online advertising strategies for a publisher. Today, I’m sitting on the other side of the table, buying advertising to help drive website traffic, content downloads, and webinar registrations.

When I discuss our content marketing plans — and our budget — I make a point of letting all publishers know that my goal is to become a partner with them. And if you talk to anyone I’ve purchased advertising from, many of them have not only become good friends, but we’ve also helped each of our businesses grow in the process.

The ad placements are just one part of a three-legged media stool that combines paid, earned, and owned media. This convergence helped create a simple content marketing strategy that led us to start thinking about publishers in a whole new way while putting an end to interruptive advertising.Continue Reading

In a recent interview with Jay Baer, co-author of “The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Company Faster, Smarter and More Social” and one of the Content Marketing Institute’s consultants, Jay explained four key metrics that every content marketer needs to measure: consumption metrics, sharing metrics, lead metrics, and sales metrics.

As always, Jay is right on the mark, but I would break this down even further into two distinct categories: Metrics that result in actions and those that merely drive reactions.Continue Reading