If you spend an entire first date talking about yourself, you likely won’t have a second date. The content marketing world is no different. You won’t continue to court a potential customer if your company talks endlessly about its products and services right out of the gate. To develop strong customer relationships, companies need to find out who their customers are, demonstrate an understanding of their pain points, and share appealing content at the right time.

Topics: Content Marketing, thought leadership

Audience attention is one of the most precious commodities for the modern marketer. Earning and cultivating an audience is a challenge all companies face. The role content can play in attracting, engaging, and retaining audiences is second to none. Harnessing that power, however, is extraordinarily difficult.

 

Topics: Content Marketing

Marketers have access to more data than ever before. Our business decisions depend on it—so much so that “Show me the data!” has become a rallying cry heard in nearly every discussion in which strategy, execution, or measurement is up for debate. Content, and its role in the buying process, is no exception.

Topics: Content Marketing, Content Strategy

According to a recent Salesforce report, the three most pressing business challenges facing B2B marketers are:

1. New business development
2. Quality of leads
3. Demand and lead generation

So how will these B2B marketers overcome their biggest challenges? One indication is where they plan to invest their budget in the coming year. And according to the same Salesforce report, 68 percent plan to increase their spend on content marketing—more than any other single budget item.

Topics: Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Content Creation

The infographic is dead; or if not dead, it's going extinct. At least according to Fast Company.

Topics: Content Marketing, Content Creation, Infographics

My name is Paul, and I’m addicted to the Investigation Discovery cable channel.

“ID”—for those not in the know—is Discovery Communications’ 24/7 collection of original and curated true-crime mysteries. Recently, my ID addiction led to the discovery of “Serial,” a new true-crime show that investigates a 15-year-old murder case. The show isn’t on TV. In fact, it’s not on radio or YouTube, either. It’s actually in a trendy digital format that’s risen in popularity by 25 percent from 2013-2014, according to Edison Research.

Topics: Content Marketing, Demand Generation, Interactive Media, Content Tools, Video, virtual events, podcasts

Advances in technology have made one thing abundantly clear in the last 15 years: We are never “finished” with improving. This holds especially true in content marketing.

Topics: Content Marketing, Content Strategy, content ROI, marketing automation