Over recent years, I’ve dedicated most of my effort and inquiry into content marketing and content strategy. I’ve written a book on the topic, as well as published more research in the field than any other individual. Content is the distillation of all my professional passions. I’ve worked as a marketer, editor, journalist and analyst –
New Chapter: VP, Content Marketing at Teradata Applications Read More »
Nothing matters more in search engine optimization than content. Nothing. And, while search visibility is a high priority for most brands (and as SEO providers rebrand themselves as “content marketing” companies), in a survey I conducted of more than 75 very senior marketing executives, most at Fortune 500 brands, SEO ranked dead last on their
Content & SEO: Getting Basic With The Basics Read More »
If you’ve been around digital marketing since the Pleistocene Epoch, which correlates roughly with the mid-1990s, you’ve doubtless noticed a trend. Whenever a new channel or medium appears — and appears to have staying power — marketers’ first instinct seems always to be: throw a teenager at it. During the Web 1.0 era, businesses were
Content Marketing’s Chicken & Egg Budget Problem Read More »
Organizations are finally getting the memo: They need a clear, cogent, documented and well-communicated content strategy to govern their content marketing efforts. My research (at Altimeter Group), corroborated by that of several other studies, indicates that currently 70 percent of companies practicing content marketing lack a documented strategy. But thankfully, this is slowly changing as
Steps Toward Developing A Content Strategy Read More »
To market effectively requires a strategy, but a simple fact that eludes many marketers is that you are allowed to change the strategy. I hadn’t realized how intractable strategy is perceived to be until a few recent calls with clients, as well as a student writing a PhD thesis on content marketing, left me shaking
Content Strategy Isn’t Set in Stone Read More »
The foundation of content strategy is goals. Without knowing why content will be created and published — to what end, for whom, where, and how — content marketing is at best a spurious, ad hoc activity. Yet when my colleague and partner-in-research Susan Etlinger and I sat down around a year ago to discuss the
A Business-Oriented Content Measurement Framework Read More »
Content has become pervasive. It fills websites, social media, advertising and collateral. It comprises words, images, audio-visual material, infographics and a host of other form factors. As media and channels proliferate, so too does content. Yet, according to recent research I conducted, measuring content effectiveness remains the single most daunting task facing (content) marketers. On
A Meaningful Framework For Content Measurement Read More »
My latest research, Content Marketing Performance: A Framework to Measure Real Business Impact is hot off the presses (virtually speaking, of course). Please feel free to download a copy from the link above. Here’s how my esteemed colleague Susan Etlinger introduced our project today, cross-posted from the Altimeter Group blog: About a year ago, Rebecca Lieb and I had
New Research: Content Marketing Performance Read More »
A content audit is the cornerstone of content strategy, which governs content marketing. The aim is to perform a qualitative analysis of all the content on a website (or in some cases, a network of sites and/or social media presences — any content for which your organization is responsible). Why perform a content audit, which
How To Conduct A Content Audit Read More »
Todd Wheatland just published a very in-depth audio interview with me that he conducted for the Content Marketing Institute late last year. It’s not like me to post an interview with myself on my blog, but this one’s unusual in that I open up quite a bit personally, and discuss my path from film critic to
My Path From Film Critic to Digital Media Analyst – An Interview Read More »
