By Joe Pulizzi published August 3, 2013 A few weeks back, I sat through a "content marketing" presentation, where the presenter showed a number of case studies and talked about how the brands were leveraging the power of content marketing to grow their businesses. Unfortunately, none of the examples were actually content marketing.
By Joe Pulizzi published August 1, 2013 Disney, Allstate Insurance, American Airlines, ExactTarget, Google, Scholastic, Inc., and University of Phoenix are just a few of the brands to receive honors from the 2013 Content Marketing Awards - the largest awards program in North America that recognizes those who create content for organizations.
By Joe Pulizzi published July 27, 2013 Every day, we run a new post on content marketing on the CMI blog. And in almost all of them, we discuss why you need content marketing, or how to increase your content success. Obviously, we're committed to the belief that a strategic content marketing plan provides significant benefits to marketers.
By Joe Pulizzi published July 20, 2013 If you are a regular reader of the CMI blog, you know that we rarely promote our products and services within the content itself - we take the art and science of content marketing seriously, and do our best to practice what we preach.
By Joe Pulizzi published July 13, 2013 " We have met the enemy, and he is us." -Pogo (by Walt Kelly) Don't get me wrong: Content marketing can be extremely complex. But in my opinion, there should be no doubt that marketers themselves are to blame for most of the problems they encounter.
By Joe Pulizzi published July 6, 2013 I just finished reading " Ctrl Alt Delete," the new business book from Mitch Joel (Mitch was a keynote speaker at last year's Content Marketing World, and is keynoting the Content Marketing World Financial Summit this September in Cleveland).
By Joe Pulizzi published June 29, 2013 " Your idea isn't new. Pick an idea; at least 50 other people have thought of it. Get over your stunning brilliance and realize that execution matters more. " -Mark Fletcher, Founder of Bloglines.com.
By Joe Pulizzi published June 22, 2013 In the 1980s and 1990s, LEGO faced a tremendous threat from competing construction toys. After all, the very simplicity of LEGO's building blocks also made them very easy to duplicate, both by small-scale copycats as well as established toy companies.
By Joe Pulizzi published June 15, 2013 Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis often talks about the qualities that, in his opinion, describe the perfect content product: real-time, fact-driven, visual, efficient, and curated. Let's review: Real-time: Does your content take advantage of current trends and relevant news stories?
By Joe Pulizzi published June 8, 2013 If it's becoming a challenge to get your C-level executive to write the thought leadership content you need for your corporate storytelling efforts, remember that, while some CEOs may love to write, nearly all of them like to talk.
By Joe Pulizzi published June 1, 2013 " A year from now, what's different? " When I used to sell custom publishing services for large B2B brands, I always asked the above question before signing a contract, because the answer was the most critical element of the final agreement.
By Joe Pulizzi published May 25, 2013 I just finished reading this Richard Branson post about following your passions in life. In it, he restates this magnificent quote from Nelson Mandela: " Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world. " I truly believe in this.
By Joe Pulizzi published May 18, 2013 Disclaimer: This post discusses what may happen in the future (and may turn out to be dramatically wrong). Over the past month of speeches and appearances, I've heard two questions more often than any others: When consumers finally tire of ads on the web (i.e., pre-roll, roadblock ads, basic banners), what will brands do?
By Joe Pulizzi published May 11, 2013 The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) has released benchmark research projects in North America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. One overwhelming consistency across all the marketers we've surveyed relates to content marketing effectiveness. Across the board, only 33 percent of marketers deem their efforts as effective.
By Joe Pulizzi published May 7, 2013 Over the last several months, we have been looking at how content marketing usage varies across vertical markets, geographies, and company sizes, based on original CMI research. Today, we focus on the demographic of B2B small business marketers (i.e., companies with 10 to 99 employees) that operate in North America.
By Joe Pulizzi published May 4, 2013 I first started to dabble with content marketing in 1998. At that time, I worked in the internal communications department for an insurance company. Our goal was to get the employees to use our internal processing and database services, rather than outsourcing.
By Joe Pulizzi published April 27, 2013 I average about three speeches a week revolving around the topic of content marketing. At every one of those events I ask, " How many of you have a documented content marketing strategy?" That answer has never been more than 20 percent, and usually just a few hands are raised.
By Joe Pulizzi published April 20, 2013 What's the future of content? It's a question that my friend Lee Odden (author of " Optimize ") has recently been asking on his blog. CMI has also been digging into this important area, both as a content marketing agency and from a hype and positioning perspective.
By Joe Pulizzi published April 16, 2013 North American business-to-business (B2B) enterprise marketers (1,000+ employees) use more content marketing tactics, outsource content creation more frequently, and are more challenged with integration across marketing, when compared with their B2B peers overall.
By Joe Pulizzi published April 13, 2013 Have you noticed the recent proliferation of " content marketing agencies " popping up on the scene? You may be wondering why, but this trend has been happening for years now.
By Joe Pulizzi published April 6, 2013 How many banks can you think of that put so much faith in the power of brand content that they began producing award-winning television and video shows on a daily basis? No matter how hard you try, it's likely you'll only come up with one: Jyske (pronounced You-ska) Bank.
By Joe Pulizzi published April 3, 2013 The Content Marketing Institute is excited to publish B2B Software Content Marketing: 2013 Benchmarks, Budget, and Trends - North America , sponsored by International Data Group (IDG).
By Joe Pulizzi published March 30, 2013 Nearly 200,000 people have signed up to receive regular content updates from Brian Clark and his software business, Copyblogger Media. Kraft Foods has over 1 million people who request and pay to receive its print magazine, Kraft Food & Family .
By Joe Pulizzi published March 27, 2013 This post was co-written by CMI's Strategist in Residence, Robert Rose. Regardless of whether you are exploring the feasibility of content marketing or have already developed a cohesive strategy, you probably want to better understand the precise forms of content that your specific audience wants to connect with.
By Joe Pulizzi published March 23, 2013 As of February 2013, the Content Marketing Institute site was seeing an average of 130,000 unique visitors per month, almost 300,000 page views, and over 40,000 email newsletter subscribers (both daily and weekly).
