Now, 15 years later, I’ve seen all sides of this little, booming industry, and it has afforded me a bit of perspective. We’ve come so far, and yet there is still so much to be accomplished.

Here are some of the things we (at CMI) have learned along the way. I hope you find one or two helpful nuggets of wisdom in here.

1. There is no silver bullet

Regardless of what anyone says, there is no silver bullet when it comes to content marketing strategy. So many marketers are looking for the perfect dashboard, system, process, and distribution plan for their content marketing. It simply doesn’t exist. We’ve worked with hundreds of small and large brands around the world, and only one thing has been consistent: Every plan we developed was different. Why? It’s simple: The mixture of communicating what your business offers, delivering on your customers’ informational needs, and sharing your own corporate story is impossible to duplicate — the output from your particular blend of attributes and goals should always be different and unique.

As Don Schultz, the father of integrated marketing, has always professed, competitors can copy everything about what you do… your pricing, your product, where you promote it… but they can’t copy exactly how you will communicate.

2. You can play offense or defense

One of my favorite basketball players of all time is Julius “Dr. J” Erving. I’ve heard many interviews in which Dr. J talks about two ways to look at basketball offense: You can impose your will on the offense, or you can take what the offense gives you. Dr. J always chose to exert his own will, and that worked for him (quite well, in fact). LeBron James, on the other hand, usually takes what the defense gives him, which is why he racks up so many assists.

Both strategies can be effective. At CMI, we decided to exert our will with the term “content marketing.” In 2007, we popped onto the scene and started using the term like it had been around for years. Through lots of planning, strategy, and luck, it worked, and now content marketing is the defacto term for our industry. (Incidentally, HubSpot did the same thing with “inbound marketing.”)

But imposing your will is just one way to do it. You could also choose to ride the waves of others and pick your sweet spot. A great example of this is Social Media Examiner. When it launched in 2009, many thought it was late to the party… but it rode the social media wave and executed a content marketing strategy second to none, growing into one of the most-trafficked B2B marketing sites on the planet.

3. Content marketing is the great equalizer

“David vs. Goliath” is alive and well in content marketing. Large budgets don’t always win; actually, the smaller players usually come out on top because they are equipped to move more agilely and quickly than their larger competition. For instance, CMI had a smaller budget than almost every marketing media company on the planet, yet we came out on top through focus and hard work. I’ve never seen a bigger company move faster than a smaller organization. OpenView Venture Partners is, relatively speaking, a small VC company compared to its peers. On the web, though, it dominates.

4. You don’t have to be on all platforms

In many cases, it’s smart to weave your story onto multiple platforms. It’s entirely possible to have a killer webinar series, amazing blog, outstanding video program, and cutting-edge digital magazine all at the same time.

But there is another way. You may decide to focus and work to dominate one platform. How about a killer podcast series? What about an amazing print newsletter? Maybe a blog is just the platform for you.

Yes, you construct your strategy before choosing your channels, but don’t feel obligated to be active on every channel that your customer uses. The international travel magazine, Monicle, has just a print magazine. No iPad version. No Facebook page. It works for the magazine and its readers.

Sometimes simple and focused is better.

5. Subscribers rule

If I have one regret as a content marketer, it’s that I didn’t focus early enough on generating subscribers. It took us years of experimenting, but we finally found our “Moneyball number:” the subscriber. We’ve found that once someone is a subscriber, they do different things than non-subscribers that lead to more revenue for us. Instead of converting from content to an immediate sales opportunity, we’ve found that converting from content to more content is the best way (for us). (For more on subscribers, please check out these outstanding reports from ExactTarget — a great example of content marketing, as well.)

6. The smaller the niche the better, but being distinct is a must

Content marketing works best when you target a very specific group of people with a very specific story. The smaller the niche you choose, the better. Think about it this way: In what content area can you become the leading expert in the world? If you can name five organizations or people already focusing on that area, you may want to start telling a different story, rather than just telling the same one in an incrementally better way.

7. Public speaking fans the flames

Public speaking is almost always overlooked in content distribution strategies. Yet, few tactics spread your message as effectively and powerfully as having a compelling speaker share inspirational stories about your brand around the globe. Look at the greatest content creators out there — such as SAP, Kraft, and Cisco Systems. Each of these organizations has multiple people out sharing their stories in public industry forums.

Find and groom storytellers in your organization, and start working on getting speaking opportunities for them at industry events. When you do, share these public speaking tips with them.

8. With a solid strategy, content can be as easy as shooting big fish in a small barrel

Over the past year, I’ve spoken to more than 5,000 marketers about content marketing. Easily, fewer than 10 percent of these people had developed a documented content strategy. I’m serious.

That is why we are seeing so much horrible content out there. Marketers are filling buckets (channels) without clearly thinking about why they should be doing so.

Simply put, if you develop even a simple strategy for your content marketing, and give some thought to how that strategy should integrate with the rest of your marketing plan, you can, and probably will, dominate. While everyone else is lost in the woods, you’ll already be on the path to greatness.

9. Coordination is critical

About a year ago, I met with the email marketing manager for a large travel company. She was responsible for sending millions of emails a day — some sales-focused and some educational — to their database. I wondered how she coordinated her content activity with their social media content creation, so I asked her. She told me that she had yet to meet the person who oversees content in social media, but she planned on doing so soon.

Unfortunately, this is the rule, rather than the exception, in most organizations.

We don’t know what the structure of marketing departments will look like the future, but for right now, collaboration and coordination is key. For example, SAS holds weekly meetings with the key content ambassadors from the different silos. Lattice Engines uses enterprise social networking service Yammer to coordinate work across multiple teams. Find what works for you, but you’ll find that a little coordination on the front end will save you a ton of time and resources.

10. Content marketing works with — not against — other initiatives

This is essential, so let me repeat it: Content marketing works best when it’s conceived as an integral part of your marketing initiatives, rather than having to function in isolation. So many people out there feel it’s an either/or scenario. It’s not. You don’t necessarily stop advertising because you are launching a content platform like Procter & Gamble’s Home Made Simple or American Express’ Open Forum. In fact, those are two great examples of how paid promotion can expand the reach of epic content.

Content marketing is like butter: It makes all your marketing recipes come out that much better.

For more strategic advice on content marketing best practices, read “Managing Content Marketing” by Robert Rose and Joe Pulizzi.

To save you some time I’ve listed a few ideas for you to play around with.

WEIGHT LOSS

This one is a no brainer and will continue to make money until the end of time, or unless they find a way to make everyone in the world extremely healthy and remove all of the bad food… which they won’t. The weight loss industry generates billions of dollars every year and during the New Year it just explodes as people are trying to lose weight and look good in their New Year’s Resolutions. Another hot time is the months leading up to the summer. No matter if you are pushing diet pills, exercise equipment or training videos… the weight loss industry will always be hot!

CLOTHING

Just like people want to lose weight and look good, they are also going to want to have some nice looking clothing as well. While most people like to visit a local store or mall, the trend of buying clothing online continues to grow daily. As an online marketer you can build web sites that focus on selling different types of clothing, shoes or brands. Fortunately you won’t need to contact any brands or negotiate huge contracts as many of the top labels and names out there already have an affiliate program that you can team up with. There really is a whole world of options out there for you when it comes to clothing advertising… you can target movies shirts, celebrities, movies, holidays and much more.

FINANCIAL SERVICES

As long as people continue to buy things and have money in their lives, there will always be financial issues. This can be anything from simple credit checks, promoting credit cards, stocks/investing and much more. The bottom line is, everyone wants more money and needs to find a way to manage their budgets or improve their credit. If you wanted to get active in this evergreen niche, it’s a good idea to build a resource site that provides detailed information on what people are looking for. (ie: how to improve a low credit score)

These are just a few examples of evergreen content and while some may be more profitable and saturated than others, it’s your job to put in the necessary research to find a winning niche and business model. Evergreen content is out there all over the place, it’s just a matter of making sure your business or site is the one they find when they are looking for it.

So how can you find great stuff as part of your content marketing efforts? Even better, how can you become a curator known for generously sharing the best of relevant content? Here are some tips for you. Of course this is not an exhaustive list, but instead shows simple steps you can start today.

First, you need to find great content.

• Subscribe to blogs and newsletters in your field; use Feedly, now that Google Reader is fading away, to keep those subscriptions up to date and in order.
• Check mainstream news sources daily (New York Times, Guardian, Mashable, etc.)
• Read LinkedIn Today for ideas.
• Sign up for updates from News.me, which gleans what it determines to be top stories from your Facebook and Twitter feeds, and delivers them to you as daily emails.
• Set up persistent searches in Twitter for keywords you’re interested in (for me, it’s podcasting, storytelling, curation and so on).
• Follow smart people on Twitter and subscribe to Twitter lists of “thought leaders” in your areas of interest.
• Get involved in Google+ Communities, where you’ll find plenty of insights and news around the niche topics you care about.
• Subscribe to “newspapers” on Paper.li; look for papers that focus on subject matter that’s meaningful to you. Here’s a quick video on Paper.li (slightly out of date but still apropos).
• Flip through Flipboard on your mobile device to find interesting stuff. You can share items directly to your social media accounts via Flipboard too.
• Sign up for Scoop.it, a publishing-by-curation platform, designed around your favorite keywords.

Next, you have to organize this wonderful content you’ve found.
My favorite tool for organizing my content is Delicious, a social bookmarking service. This slightly dated video shows you how it works. Some of my colleagues prefer Diigo or Pearltrees. Whichever social bookmarking tool you choose, be sure it allows you to add as many tags as you want, to make it easier to find content later. Do not rely on your browser bookmarks. Trust me on this!

Finally, you want to publish your great content.
Certainly there are a zillion ways to do this, but here are a few suggestions:

• Write blog posts, using the information you’re found as a jumping off point, while adding your own experience, insights and opinions.
• Tweet interesting blog posts, news items, etc., to your followers; share the content on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ too.
• If the content is visual, consider sharing it on Pinterest.
• Publish your own “newspapers” on Scoop.it or Paper.li and share them via social media.
• Use Storify to gather up tweets around a particular hashtag (great for events!) and share them on social media or embed them in your blog.
• For an organization, consider using such paid services as Curata or Curation Station to curate content.

You’ll become a true curator when you consistently find, organize, annotate and share the best of relevant content. As I’ve mentioned, the above is not a complete list, and I’m curious to learn about your favourite ways to find, organize and share content. Please comment below.

By the way, if you’re interested in the topic of curation, you might find these presentations helpful:
Best practices for content curation
Content curation

While syndication is common in the web, when a party posts your content without your permission, they’ve stolen from you and are tarnishing the value of your original content and its SEO value for your site. Remember, unique content is what keeps your site appreciated by consumers, so be sure to protect your content by:

• Detect stolen content. To stop content scrapers, you must first discover that your content has been stolen in the first place. Sites such as Copyscape allow you to check if content from your URL has been posted anywhere throughout the web. If you use WordPress, take advantage of the trackbacks feature to see if your inbound links are coming from your anchor text that has been posted elsewhere. You can also set up Google alerts to your RSS feed to notify you whenever duplicate content has been posted online.
• Get credit. Once you’ve discovered stolen content, you’ll want to ensure that you get credit for these copied posts. For WordPress users, the RSS footer plugin allows you to place a piece of content (presumably your authorship info) at the bottom of any piece, even if it’s been posted elsewhere. If you don’t use WordPress, be sure you have anchor text that at least links back to your site, so that if the copiers were lazy and didn’t check the outbound links, traffic could still be redirected to you.
• Report the plagiarized content. Before taking drastic action, try contacting the site administrator kindly and ask for them to remove the copied content and take internal action. However, if they don’t comply, you can file a DMCA report through Adsense any time that you find your content copied. Just know that offender is likely going to get banned from Adsense for the offense, protecting the content of you and many other content creators out there. In short, try contacting site administrators first and if that doesn’t work, file a report with Adsense as a last resort.

How to Prevent Plagiarism Online

Sometimes the best medicine is prevention, so be sure to take the necessary steps to protect your online content! One of the easiest ways to do this is through Google’s authorship feature. The great benefit is that the content will be linked to your name and site and even if someone copies it, Google will know that the content is already associated with you. For specific instructions about setting up your Google authorship feature, be sure to read more here.

Have you had problems with thieving content snatchers? What steps did you take to protect your content?

The average web surfer has an array of choices at his fingertips when it comes to information. Statistics show that if you’re not able to grab his attention and convince him that yours is the one he’s looking for within five seconds tops, he’s already clicked away. Make sure you keep the following principles in mind from the get-go in order to avoid this.

Provide content that’s relevant and on point.
Effective web writing isn’t about simply writing whatever comes to mind on a given day. You want to make sure that everything posted to your website, company blog, or company social networking account has some sort of relevance to your target audience. Keep things on topic.

If you’re running a website about breeding German shepherds, don’t go off on a tangent about your son’s Little League game, for instance. As good a metaphor as you may find that to be in regards to a given subject, your target audience isn’t interested in hearing about Little League and won’t be patient while they wait for you to get to the point. They want information on breeding German shepherds and that’s it.

Make your articles easy to skim.
When it comes to reading web writing, most people are going to decide whether or not an article is worth their time by skimming it quickly to get an idea of what it’s about. The more skim-friendly you can make your articles, the better! Break articles up with subheadings that give the reader an at-a-glance idea of what the article in its entirety is about. Using lists, bullet points, and short paragraphs are other techniques that make your web writing very user friendly.

Make your prose action-oriented.
People turn to websites and blogs for easily digested information on a topic for sure, but they also turn to web writing for advice. Your readers want you to tell them what to do, so be sure to use action-oriented words and concise, to-the-point sentences that flow. Avoid the passive voice at all costs, as it will quickly inspire your readers to give up and see what the next guy has to say about your topic of choice.
Enlist the aid of professionals.

If you’re a web writing expert yourself and have the time to produce all of your own written content, then more power to you! However, never underestimate the value of having the right help in your corner when it comes to a big job like maintaining a website or keeping a blog interesting by filling it with relevant, worthwhile content.

Hiring professional freelancers to help you with your workload can be a wonderful way to keep the content coming in a timely manner. This can help free you up to take care of other important tasks… like brainstorming new products or handling other aspects of managing your business. What’s more, professional web writing professionals can help add additional energy, viewpoints, and value to your overall body of content. They’re affordable as well!

Whether you decide to go it alone or move forward with your content in the company of other professionals, never lose sight of one important fact. When it comes to web writing, content may be king… but form and technique are everything.

As marketers, we want a piece of this action because, not only do we get to entertain the masses, but we can get our brands in front of potential customers, clients and buyers on their own terms through peer recommendation.

What is ‘going viral’?

Essentially, it is creating a piece of marketing media – usually a video, image or other easily shareble work – that is then shared across the internet, traditionally via social media or email.

However, not all viral content has started from humble beginnings. The Cadbury’s gorilla was a TV advert but the value of the ad was enhanced considerably from the viral success it achieved afterwards and continues to do so.

How does viral marketing work?

The principles of the potential of viral marketing were documented as early as 1980 although this is in the pre-internet era. The principle was called Metcalfe’s Law and this law states that:

“The value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2).”

For the mathematically gifted this is derived from n(n-1)/2 n=number of connector , in essence 2 telephones can only make 1 connection, 5 can make 10 and 12 can make 66. So 100,000 telephones would result in 4,999,950,000 connections, that is 5 billion connections. Now apply that to the potential of the internet and you get some pretty staggering figures!

To get in front of this many people would traditionally take a budget not too dissimilar to that of a national debt and require planning along the same lines as D-day!

Rules for viral content?

Firstly, we need to accept that not everything can be shared – it often takes multiple attempts before it will work.

Secondly, the content needs to be worthy of sharing. Remember, whoever is sharing it wants to be associated with the content, so think about how you are portraying your brand, the users that share it and the social perceptions that will come with it.

Thirdly, it needs to be easy to share across all platforms and, as such, take advantage of likes, tweets and views etc.

What can be shared?

• Articles, web pages and blog posts (like this one, hint hint)
• Interactive content games, quizzes, widgets and polls
• Video from YouTube, vzaar or any number of video hosting platforms
• Audio from podcasts, sound cloud, i-tunes or spotify
• Images such as photos, memes or infographics
• Content that is funny – we have all seen and shared for this reason
• Content that is amazing or incredible – wing suits any one?
• Content that connects emotionally – whether positive or negative, it will get shared
• Content that ties in with what we believe and how we want to be perceived
• Thought provoking content – did it make you take a second to reflect or change your view point?
• Content that gets ignored by the big players in media, an injustice or uncool for traditional news
• Over the top content will elicit a response
• Content that pushes the boundaries (but maintains professionalism)

Final considerations

Don’t forget, in this day and age, we have multiple platforms and plethora of hardware to manage the way we view content. Test it for mobile and tablet (IOS and android) and double check your browsers (IE, chrome, Safari and so on). Test it on both a Windows machine and a Mac where possible. Don’t trip yourself up by not considering the potential of where your content will go.

Whilst I believe there is no secret recipe here to guarantee success, I do believe that by combining integrity, visual or audio impact and easy functionality with interesting content, you will be successful and achieve a level of viral success.

Ultimately, just have fun doing it and the chances are your audience will too!

Microformats are small inserts of code that make it possible to create meta data, which can be understood by machines to help pre-populate data on media sources like Facebook and Google. This allows marketers to optimize their branded content and offer richer website content experiences to those who are exposed to them on social networks.

In his iconic presentation, “The Awesome Power of Microformats,” Kevin Lawver said that with microformats, “You can create more consistent content. You can share your microformat with content providers, ensuring that you’ll get content in the right format [and] you don’t need to DO anything to that content before you present it to users.”

This gives publishers the potential to maintain control over their content’s visibility and message long after they have hit the publish button by establishing a standard for the way social media networks will display that content. Search engines have also gotten in on the act, using their own microformats to display rich snippets in search engine results pages (SERPs) and incorporate semantic search elements, such as Google’s Knowledge Graph.

Google Authorship and rel=”author”

What it does: As you may have heard a million times, search engines have begun to display authorship within SERPs, helping marketers to improve their click-through rates (CTRs) and, potentially, get better rankings from Google.

Using the link relation attribute tag, rel=”author” within a link tells search engines that the page is authored by a particular person, thus allowing their Google Authorship status to display in SERPs. In addition, should the fabled AuthorRank verification someday come to pass, this signature should also enable enhanced search rankings for the author.

How to use it: Implementation of Google Authorship ranges from the breathtakingly simple to the needlessly difficult. But the best process I’ve found is to use a signature (similar to the one that I am using in my bio for this post) signalling the Google+ page of the author, like so:

If you don’t know your Google+ page identity (i.e., the long string of numbers in the URL above), just sign into your Google account, and click on View Profile in the drop-down menu next to your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner — your ID number will appear in the URL of the profile page that opens.

(For those who are interested in learning more advanced methods, I’d highly recommend checking out Steve Morgan’s slides and screencast.)

rel=”publisher”

What it does: The tag rel=”publisher” is a slightly different beast than its rel=”author” cousin. Though this code also functions within Google’s search environment, it uses a completely different format for meta-content delivery.

rel=”publisher” creates a rich code snippet that displays marketing content and information drawn from a content creator’s Google+ network. Businesses can benefit from this as it allows them to own more of the search space surrounding their brands.

A rich snippet, like the example above, shows searchers your social activity and allows them to click through to follow you as part of their search experience.

How to use it: Implementation of rel=”publisher” is a pretty straightforward affair. It is a simple meta tag that sits within the section of your website’s HTML code. Simply add to the code of your home page. Again, in place of “Google+ URL” above, you would include your own Google profile page URL.

Below is an example of how we have implemented the tag at Box UK:

Though there is still some debate around whether this tag should be a site-wide addition, the home page should be sufficient for our purposes of branding SERPs.

Twitter cards

What they do: Twitter introduced its Twitter card format last year, allowing brands and publishers to enhance the expanded tweets Twitter creates for their content (similar to the way Open Graph tags provide content creators with the ability to determine what their posts and pages will look like when shared on Facebook).

A recent study by Omoii found that Twitter cards users experienced increases in both click-through rates and engagement (in the form of retweets) with their content: Click-through rates from tweet to post averaged 3 percent with Twitter cards (compared to 1.6 percent without), and engagement rate increased from 27 percent of tweets to 59 percent.

By providing richer data within the content you distribute across your social networks, you can better “sell” that content to the end user in a more scalable manner than ever before.

How to use it: To sign up, follow the three steps noted on Twitter’s developer site:

1. Review the documentation for the type of card you want to implement.
2. Add the pertinent meta tags to your page.
3. Put your URLs into the validator tool to check for errors and request to be approved.

It may take a few weeks to be verified by Twitter, but it is getting faster all the time.

Facebook Open Graph

What it does: When a Facebook user “likes” or shares the URL for a piece of content on Facebook, its Open Graph protocol takes that data and uses it to create the title, description, image, and other attributes that comprise the structured information displayed about that page. This is pulled from the page from information set within the code that defines what each data point should be.

Facebook’s Open Graph is probably the most useful mark-up for social sharing, not only because a billion pieces of content are shared every day via Facebook’s Open Graph, but also because Twitter and Google+ both default to Open Graph data when their own specific tags aren’t being used.

How to use it: For content marketers who use WordPress, the brilliant Yoast WordPress SEO plug-in allows you to implement both Facebook Open Graph and Twitter Cards in a very user-friendly manner. But for those of you whose content publishing efforts rely on hard coding, the process for implementing Open Graph is a bit more complex and may be best left to your webmaster or IT department (though the tech-savvy among you can check out Alex Moss’ post, and take a look at the documentation from Facebook for additional guidance).

Once you are up and running, you can check that you have implemented the mark-up correctly by using a program like the OG debugger to pull up any issues with the code.

How are you managing your brand’s message online? Have you taken microformats on board? I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions in the comments below.

For more tips on implementing the latest optimization tips in your content marketing efforts, read CMI’s Content Marketing Playbook.

Cover image via Bigstock

As more purchasing decisions are made online and more firms embrace content marketing, only accounting firms with extraordinary content will stand out in the new B2B marketplace. I’m sorry to say it, but that blog you haven’t updated since January simply isn’t going to cut it. Accounting firms must consider how to create online content that’s helpful and engaging enough to keep prospects coming back again and again.

Below, I’ve shared examples of four different types of great accounting content. My hope is that they will inspire you to produce bigger, better content that will keep your firm growing in the new era of B2B marketing.

Blogs: The Blunt Bean Counter by Mark Goodfield

The Blunt Bean Counter stands above most other accounting blogs I’ve read due to the ability to explore complex topics such as taxation and wealth management in a manner that is interesting, entertaining, and sometimes even funny.  For my favorite example of Goodfield’s unique style, please read “Are Accountants Really Boring?” — a post that humorously explores the unfortunate stereotype of the dull, introverted accountant with more than a few self-deprecating jokes along the way.

The key to Goodfield’s success is his mastery of “infotainment.”  Every post simultaneously informs and entertains the audience.  Like any good teacher, he understands that people learn better when a subject is framed in a way that interests them.  The result is a highly effective blog that helps readers tackle their taxation problems while keeping them interested and engaged.

eBooks/Other Resources: The Marcum Tax Guide by Marcum

Many accounting firms aim to provide their clients and prospective clients with up-to-date tax information, but Marcum went above and beyond by creating this comprehensive 40-page guide for end of year taxes.  Covering everything from new laws and provisions to planning ideas to a handy tax planning checklist, this guide provides virtually everything businesses or individuals need to have a successful tax season.

Podcasts:  Accounting Best Practices by Steve Bragg

As I thought about how to best describe what makes Bragg’s podcast so effective, I found that his ITunes reviews, all of which were glowing, said it better than I ever could, so I’ll begin by sharing some of their praises below:

• “Informative without being stuffy”
• “Articulate and plainspoken, and provides a concise and clear explanation of each topic”
• “The information is practical and useful TODAY.”
• “Jam-packed with useful information, even for people like me, a manager who no longer practices”
• “I’ve tried listening to the other accounting-related audio out there. Most of them are inconsistently posted, far too dry (what a surprise…) or utterly incomprehensible.  This podcast delivers the information while keeping you engaged.”

As you can see from the above, Steve Bragg’s series of 5-10 minute podcasts is beloved by readers for the way it addresses timely, relevant topics in a straightforward way. Covering any and all topics related to enterprise accounting, Bragg provides unique insight and conversational guidance on questions of importance to his audience. He sometimes bases episodes around real-life scenarios submitted by listeners, thereby ensuring his content is helpful and relevant. With over 1,000,000 downloads on ITunes, the strategy seems to be paying off!

Video Marketing: State of the Firm 2012 by WithumSmith+Brown

For its annual state of the firm meeting in 2012, WithumSmith+Brown (WSB) took a decidedly different approach to CPA firm video marketing.  Rather than film a stuffy video in which managers tell you what makes the firm special, WSB decided to show you how it’s different by choreographing and filming a massive, firm-wide flash mob in the heart of New York City.

The results? A few very shocked subway passengers, 54,000+ views on YouTube, an exciting team-building activity for the WSB employees, and a good chance that you’ll remember the name WithumSmith+Brown for quite some time.

Do you have a favorite example of accounting firm content marketing? Please share it in the comment section below!

Shops are where you go to buy things—commodities. You can put the “things” in your cart, check out, and use them when you get home. Content marketing isn’t a “thing” you can put in your cart and start using right when you get back to the office.

But many companies— at least 44% are outsourcing their content creation, according to the 2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends annual report—are out there looking for businesses that they may call “content marketing shops” or “content marketing agencies.”

Let’s assume you’re one of those companies that has made the decision to outsource all or part of your content marketing effort. You’ll attempt to scope out what you need. You’ll ask for and receive referrals. You’ll inevitably start Googling (we all do it, don’t be ashamed), perhaps starting with a search for content marketing firm.

Go ahead. Google it. I made it easy for you.

Skimming both the paid and organic results for 30 seconds, here’s what I see. A firm that clearly thinks content marketing is all about social media. All kinds of software companies offering magical tools and platforms. An agency that claims to have the best writers. Another one with a “system” that will get you leads.

How am I supposed to choose?

I don’t envy you, Mr. or Mrs. Content Marketing Buyer. Many of these companies, despite the fact that they believe they specialize in content marketing of some sort, clearly don’t know who they are. So how can you sort them all out and figure out what they really do?

Let me offer one piece of advice: Don’t buy content marketing from a content marketing shop.

Content marketing is not a tactic, or a program, or a campaign—it’s not a thing you can put in your cart at the “content marketing shop.” It should be woven into every facet of marketing, and some not-so-obvious areas of your business, as well.

What should you be looking for? Here’s a starting five.

1. Strategy first, planning second, execution and tactics a distant third

One of the most commonly uttered phrases from companies looking for an outsourced content marketing solution is, “I just hope you guys can execute on all of this, because I know we can’t.”

Meanwhile, I am thinking, “We have to nail the strategy and plan. Without that, all the execution in the world won’t matter.”

In a sea of me-too approaches from me-too marketers, the better strategy always wins. Be wary of any firm that jumps right into execution and tactics.

Here’s an actionable test: Tell the firms you are considering that you already have a content marketing strategy and plan, and then shut up. If you hear crickets instead of questions, walk.

2. Content creation is not content marketing

You know what separates a well-written blog post from a superbly written blog post? Words. Structure. Maybe the tone.

You know what allows that well-written blog post to generate twice the readership and three times the engagement and sharing than the superbly written blog post? Marketing.

Here’s another easy test to separate the pretenders from the contenders: Show your potential firms a piece of content you’ve published. Ask them what they’d do with it. If all they talk about is the content itself and how they can create more of it, they’re probably not marketing with content.

3. A belief (and approach) that focuses on quality over quantity

Believe it or not, sometimes the best approach is less content, not more. This is especially true when that approach translates into content of higher quality.

Beware the content factory. You’ll know them when you see them. Their PPC ads say things like “Thousands of branded articles” or “Boost traffic instantly!” They will wow you with their portfolio of 2,000 content marketing clients…all of whom are on the $49.99/month-for-562-absolutely-craptastic-articles plan.

Avoid producers of crap. If there’s a winner in this content marketing game, I promise it won’t be them.

4. Embrace the power of SEO

While there are exceptions to this rule, I would not hire an SEO firm to handle my content marketing.

Why?

For such a long period of time, SEO (and therefore, SEO firms) was focused on things like links, keywords and rankings. Quality didn’t always matter as long as rankings improved and organic search traffic increased.

A bird and a bear named Penguin and Panda started to change all of that, and more changes are coming. Today’s SEO values original content, in-depth research and thoughtful analysis.

Again, the litmus test to determine whether your content marketing contenders understand the evolution of SEO is not complex – they should be able to point to some specific examples of clients who improved organic rankings and traffic through content marketing and they should be able to articulate their general approach to optimizing content for search engines…and for people.

5. Practicing not just preaching

Remember: you’re a business of some sort, looking to attract and transact with customers of some sort, and you’re thinking that content marketing may be able to help with that.

The content marketing service providers you are considering likely fall into that same boat, so if they believe in it enough for you to invest in it, then they better be investing in it themselves.

And if they’re not doing it, ask why not. And just listen. If they can’t get past the typical content marketing obstacles, you might be facing the same thing. Their excuses may become yours.

Off you go

Don’t make this process more complex than it has to be. You’re going to run into SEO firms, PR firms, digital agencies, design shops, direct marketing services, and everything in between.

Outsourcing content marketing is not all that different than outsourcing other areas you’ve likely already conquered. While there will be plenty of shops out there daring you pull their content marketing version off the shelf and throw it into your shopping cart, take a more strategic approach. Start with finding someone that understands business and the business challenges that can be addressed with marketing. Then determine whether that person or entity understands where content marketing fits within a broader marketing approach.

Then you can get into the details of what they know about content marketing – if they’ve made it past the business and marketing test, my guess is that they’ll pass the content marketing test as well.

Before you start your search, I encourage you to download our eBook, How To Grow Your Business With Content Marketing. I suspect you’ll come away with at least a few new ideas, and perhaps an entirely new perspective, on maximizing your content marketing investment.

Image via CrunchBase

Too often, thoughts of content for content marketing start and end with the written word. If you broaden your view, though, you open up a world of ways to connect with your target audience. Here are a few ideas.

Video
First and foremost on your list should be video. From the Dollar Shave Club crew to Blendtec’s Will It Blend series to thousands of other videos that have achieved some level of viral success, it’s hard to argue against the effectiveness of video.

Note that we’re not suggesting that “going viral” be your goal or your yardstick for success. Chances are, it ain’t gonna happen. But people like video. It engages them in a way that copy alone often can’t. Taking advantage of that fact will help your overall content marketing not only on its own strengths, but by providing variety and a change of pace.

Yes it takes more effort and potentially more budget. But given the way it can expand your audience – and strengthen the relationship you have with your existing audience – it’s not hard to justify the expense. Especially since search engines love video. (And building a YouTube channel has some great SEO and audience-building value, as well.)

Infographics
Infographics, when done well, are a great way to present a lot of information – or complex data – in an easily digestible format. And, they’re fun.

Again, costs are typically higher for infographics than for copy alone, but if you have designers on staff, you may be able to absorb that cost fairly painlessly. If not, some advanced planning makes sense. (Like brainstorming a series of infographics, producing them at the same time, and using them over the course of a month, a quarter or a year.)

Creativity is key here. Typically, infographics require some cross-discipline collaboration. Your graphics team has to work closely with team members who know their stuff. Together, they can come up with compelling ways to present ideas and information that will be of interest to your audience. It can’t be just about the data or just about pretty presentation.

Webinars
One more frequently overlooked form of content that can be incredibly productive is the webinar. Webinars provide a platform for you to connect with your audience and establish your expertise at the same time. The webinar itself is a form of content, as is the slide deck you’ll most likely produce as part of your presentation. Both can be repurposed in many ways, helping you leverage the investment you’ll make in developing and promoting the webinar.

Remember that as elsewhere in content marketing selling in a webinar is a no-no; you’ll lose your audience – and your credibility – in a nanosecond. But useful information, honestly presented, will win you respect, fans, subscribers and ultimately, business.

Don’t Forget Your Goals
With all of these forms of content, don’t forget the marketing side of the content marketing equation. Overt selling is, as I said, a serious no-no. But putting content out there for free without it being a part of a larger marketing plan is called publishing, and that’s a tough business to be in at the moment, even if you’re not giving your content away for free.

Video is a great asset to any content marketing strategy. It allows you to engage your customers, provide infomation about your company or brand and position your employees as leaders in the industry. There are many myths video is difficult and expensive to produce. But it is actually very economical to create a simple business video. Here are the three stages of making a simple video.

Kuno Clips: Associate Technologist Dan Romanski discusses the three steps of making a simple business video for content marketing.

Pre-Production

This is the planning process for your business video. In this time, you need to gather everything you will need for the video, including equipment, talent, a script and other assets you will use in the final production.

At Kuno, we shoot our videos with a Canon T3i, but most cameras and even smartphones can record video in high definition, so find one that will fit your needs and budget. With the camera, you will also need a tripod to keep the camera steady and level, as a constantly moving camera is very distracting for your audience.

Once you have the equipment, it is time to develop you script and find the talent. Your script should be short and concise but detailed enough to engage and educate your audience about your brand. A good tip is to take the key points out of a blog post and formulate them into a script. Your talent, or the person on camera, should be well spoken and knowledgeable about your company. Remember, this individual is speaking for your company, so you want him or her to sound confident and represent you well.

Production

Now that you have gathered everything you need for your video, it is time to shoot it. This process can take as little as a couple minutes and few takes to an hour (or longer) if your talent is having a little trouble in front of the camera. When you are shooting, it is good to keep in mind the environment should be relatively quiet and well lit. Proper lighting and recording are essential to a great video, as these elements are difficult to fix in post-production. A key point to remember is to take your time and record as much as you want. This will allow you to have multiple takes and shots to choose from in post-production. It is also a good idea to gather some supporting footage, or b-roll, to use for transitions and examples.

Post-Production

Post-production is the final step in making your business video. This is where you are going to piece the different shots, assets and music into a finalized video. It is important to remember to use software that allows you to add not only video, but also transitions, images/graphics and text. This also doesn’t need to be expensive. There are great, fairly inexpensive editing programs, such as PowerDirector 11 Deluxe for Windows and iMovie for Macs. Both of these programs allow you to make professional style edits without paying the “professional” price.

Now that you have learned how to develop a simple business video, please feel free to share your experiences, questions and, of course, links to your videos in the comments below.

Photo Credit: * RICCIO

Many firms are willing to invest in thought leadership campaigns. But, in order to maximize that investment, you need to design the right “home base” to show those assets off.

Your website content should be a compelling invitation to clients, alumni and targets. Take a look at your current site with this “thought leadership management” checklist in mind:

• What is the quality of our thought leadership? Have we pushed ourselves to articulate an original, competitively significant idea?
• What is the tone of our IP? Is it too academic in tone? Are we professorial or a thoughtful coach?
• Do we have the right quantity of content? You want the right mix of historical credentials and current insights.
• Have we spent time considering different formats, from videos to eBooks to infographics to widgets? Or we allowing prospects to drown in white papers?
• Have we spent too much time on “About Us” vs. “About Our Industries or Geographies?” Most visitors are eager to see themselves in you, so give them plenty of chances.
• Have we layered in the right competitive keywords for search engines to recognize?
• Did we take full advantage of our rainmaker bios? Each profile is a chance for us to tell the human story of an expert, as opposed to a dry set of credentials.
• Do our stories link together? One piece of content should give the website visitor an immediate chance to visit pieces of IP or an industry page or a practice description.
• Finally, the most important question. Is our content actionable? Are we giving our target an actionable idea that can immediately help frame their own business decisions?

You may not realize it, but your firm is now officially a publisher. Your website and thought leadership are actually your “book” and “magazine” to the outside world. It’s critically important to invest in these “owned” properties.

The bonus? When you spend the time to get your “owned” content right, you also create a valuable asset with the potential to lure “earned” online visitors to the next stage in your the sales funnel.

Clear Definitions of Curation; All in One Place

These definitions are all found in one place, by one guy, and I’d like to thank him for putting it together in an article he wrote to explain his own curation process. Thank you Nathan Weller for your great article on curation!

Content Creation: The act of writing original words, taking an original picture, shooting an original video, etc.

Content Sharing: Taking a piece of content created by yourself or others and distributing it to a following or audience. This can be done in many ways and through many channels; blogs and social media outlets being just a few of the more popular examples.

Content Scraping: (Not defined in Nathan’s post) Content scraping is basically plagiarism, where a person takes an entire post or article from someone else’s site, and then republishes it on their own site, giving no attribution, and making almost no change to the original piece.

Content Aggregation: This is like content sharing on steroids. An aggregator typically uses software that automatically pulls in content from multiple sources (such as RSS feeds) and reposts it all at one central location, usually a blog. (Attribution to the original is provided, but no additional commentary is added).

Content Curation: Similar to content aggregation, content curation also pulls from many sources. However, instead of automatically posting every piece of content pulled in, there is a manual filtering and sorting process that takes place in order to select only the most valuable pieces of content for a given audience. Curation also involves adding helpful annotation that frames the information already provided from the original source in such a way as to add additional value and/or understanding.

Thanks, Nathan!

BONUS DEFINITION: Industry News Curation. This is a sub-set of the Content Curation discipline, and an important piece of a business content marketing plan. This type of curation is the locating of relevant news for the people in your industry, the timely display of a summary of that news story at an easy-to-reach location (a page on your website), and the addition of some analysis or commentary. The point in building an Industry News Page, is to provide your followers/visitors with a short-cut to staying up to speed, and a quickly digestible bit of expert commentary.

Your Turn to Comment

So what do you think? Can you add something to these definitions to make them better? Jump in!

What content marketing is and why it works

Content marketing uses online content for promotional purposes. The objective of this is to get clients to buy what you are selling eventually. Of course, that will only happen after you have had the chance to build a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with your customers. Effective content marketing is appealing on many different levels. The writing must be of top quality and it must strike an emotional cord with your readers. Without the emotional (or human) factor, you won’t be able to build a relationship with your readers. Content marketing is a very effective way to increase your business’s success and to strengthen your relationships with your online connections.

The value of being online

There is a small possibility that you don’t really understand the importance of connecting with other people online. If you aren’t sure why online interactions and connections are so important, there is much to discuss here. On the other hand, if you do understand why online interactions are so important, you probably also get why it is important to reach the largest amount of people possible. The reality is that your existing customers and prospective customers are already online, waiting to interact with you. When it comes to getting your word out there, your website may not be enough to reach everyone you want to reach. It is important for you to understand the impact that your online content, such as a blog will make compared with your website. The reach results will come out differently, depending how you work the content. In fact, using content marketing is an excellent way to improve your ability to reach a large number of people. The way that it accomplishes this is through white papers, eBooks, blogs and case studies. In that respect, online content marketing differs from traditional marketing.

When it comes to content marketing, you are subscribing to the marketing principle of WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?). In other words, your professional purpose is to solve the other person’s problem(s). In traditional marketing, your purpose is to let the other person know how wonderful you and your business are. In actuality, the other person doesn’t really care how wonderful you and your business are. The only thing the person cares about is how you are going to solve their problem(s). With people connecting online, their goal is to gather information and to gain an education. The last thing that they want is to get a hard sell from anyone.

If you share valuable content with your online connections and it is of value to them, not only will they like what they are reading but they will share it with other people who they value and they will want to read more from you. That is exactly how you build a loyal client base. The more you interact with your online connections, they more they will begin to trust you and to find you credible, not to mention considering you a subject matter expert in your field.

Conclusion

It is important for you to understand that when you market your content online, you are using it as an educational, informative tool. You are not using it to directly sell your products and services to anyone. Marketing your content will help you to build and grow relationships with your online connections. You will find that those relationships will be mutually beneficial and extremely solid. When it comes to sharing your content online, your online connections will definitely appreciate receiving content that they can read and digest rather than receiving advertisements from you about your business. Remember, it is critical to the success of your business that you consider the needs and wants of your online connections before your own. If you can do that, they will do the same for you.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. For a free assessment of your online presence, let’s have coffee.

Event marketing can bring huge returns for an organization’s bottom line. In fact, according to research from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 69 percent of B2B marketers and 63 percent of B2C marketers in North America use in-person events as a content marketing tactic.

But developing valuable content from an event requires a ton of content planning — especially when it comes to producing video content. Yet, it’s worth the extra effort because video footage can result in lasting, memorable, and easily shareable takeaways for event attendees.

Great video content is damn hard to create — particularly for those who don’t have much production experience. Hiring an expert is often the best way to produce high quality content without having to wrestle with the technical details on your own. But even if your video content plan involves outsourcing the work, it helps to have an approach in mind for your event-based video content before you (or your selected vendor) jump in.

I recently spoke with Eric Leslie, President of OnScene Productions and the man behind the lens at events like Content Marketing World. He shared the five most powerful lessons that he’s learned through his years of experience in video production.

Lesson 1: To extend the value of your footage, make your content evergreen

It’s easy to fall into a timing trap when you’re filming an event. Maybe you want to showcase the fun that attendees had in order to attract more audience members to next year’s event. Or maybe you feel the videos you produce will need context from the event in order to provide value (e.g., “Here’s what happened at this event on this date”).

“For many organizations, that first instinct is to do an event recap video,” Eric explains. “If you take that approach, you time-stamp your content. You give your audience the details, including when the video was created. The problem is that the web moves so fast your videos are dated in a matter of months.”

Your audience is eager to learn about the things that are happening next. So even if your content still provides value five years down the road, your audience will likely dismiss it as being too old to still be relevant. So, how do you create video content from event footage that people will still talk about and get value from two or three years down the road?

The solution: Create a content plan for your videos that eliminates the need to time-stamp your footage yet still extends the shelf life of your footage online:

“We’ll do things like asking a keynote speaker to summarize her presentation, talking directly to the camera,” Eric says. “You condense the presentation into this two-minute video, overlaying visuals of the actual conference speech. The piece is no longer just about the event — it’s about the valuable, longer lasting content that came out of the event.”

Example: Eric interviewed a few marketers and created this video about influencer marketing, which is an evergreen topic in content marketing.

Lesson 2: Don’t miss a prime opportunity to tell a story

Does your event video content plan center on collecting raw footage from presentations or networking sessions? If so, you may be missing the point: The most successful videos tell compelling stories.

Sure, how-to videos have their place. That talk that got a standing ovation? It makes sense to share it with audience members who weren’t lucky enough to attend. But the real bang for your buck — the truly powerful content — lies in video that shows, rather than telling.

So how do you make your event footage tell a story?

The solution: Sit your customers down, and let them talk to the camera.

“You have all your customers in one place, convened to talk about your products and industry trends,” Eric says. “We’re talking about a prime opportunity to collect testimonials. Sit them down in front of the camera, and ask them how your products help them do their jobs better.”

Everyone has a story. It’s your job to take the opportunity to collect those stories and add them to your content arsenal.

Example: One challenge content marketers have is managing the entire process. CMI invited a few brand marketers to participate in a roundtable, in which they discussed what’s working — and where they are still being challenged.

Lesson 3: Put great minds together and they’ll repay you with great footage

Candid participants make the best subjects for event video. But without a more specific context, how do you find strong themes to tie candid footage together into segments?

Eric elaborates: “Event marketers often ask, ‘How do we create content that has more purpose to it?’ It helps to have a plan going in so you can manufacture an environment with the potential to catch lightning in a bottle.”

How do you ensure that candid footage has a clear purpose?

The solution: Put customers and experts together for a roundtable, throw in a moderator, and watch your video come to life.

Organizing a roundtable of experts or customers is a great way to capture explosive content. Focus the discussion around a thought leadership topic (such as “the future of the industry” or “your daily challenges”). Encourage roundtable participants to share stories and experience, but appoint a moderator to make sure the conversation stays on track, and your result will be valuable, evergreen video content. An added bonus is that at an industry or customer event, you already have plenty of potential participants on hand all in one place, so you don’t need to spend additional budget on flying them across the country to take part in your videos — an advantage that you can’t afford to pass up.

Example: CMI works with several consultants. At last year’s Content Marketing World conference, CMI filmed those consultants as they gathered to discuss recent CMI research on content marketing trends. The ensuing roundtable discussion on B2B content marketing research was broken into five segments (and posts), each focusing on a specific topic.

Lesson 4: Produce video content for the event — not just from it

People love fresh content. We’re always looking for that new video to share with friends and contacts. And if you can debut that content exclusively, your audience will be more compelled to share it.

So how do you create ultra-fresh, exclusive content related to your event?

The solution: Create video content in advance for use during the event, and incorporate some on-site footage or B-roll to add the fresh factor.

“We’ll create a ‘thank you’ video from tech support because they couldn’t make it to the conference, for example,” Eric explains. “We’ll run that the first day. We’ll also get some footage of a CEO talking about the state of the industry and his vision for the future. Overlay visuals of people interacting at the conference, and you have a timely piece of content.”

The real-time turnaround helps with the event experience, giving attendees the opportunity to see themselves on the big screen. This approach also takes the need to stay evergreen into account. You can also repurpose your footage across various online channels by using the visuals you filmed at of the event in a new context.

Example: Below is a video Eric created with some highlights from Content Marketing World 2012, which was included in a CMI blog post as a wrap-up that posted during the event.

Lesson 5: If you want high-quality video content, be prepared to go the extra mile

Today, everyone’s a critic. Your audience consumes so much video that, in a way, they’re experts on video quality.

The truth is that your audience can tell the difference between half-assed content and video that goes all the way. Done poorly, your video can even have the opposite of your intended effect, alienating your audience by seeming lazy.

Low-quality video usually derives from an overloaded video team — or in some cases, an individual.

“When I got started, it was a one-man show,” Eric says. “Of course you’re going to make mistakes filming an entire event by yourself — I’ve worked from 7 a.m. until 3 a.m. I’ve missed footage… and you don’t get any do-overs.”

How do you make sure you get your event videos right?

The solution: Do it right, or don’t do it at all.

One of the biggest mistakes event marketers make is skimping on the budget. If you don’t pay for quality, then you won’t get it.

“If you want to do it right, make the investment,” Eric says. And he’s right: You get what you pay for. Why would you accept anything less than the highest quality content?

Bonus lesson: Experiment, but have a plan

I also talked with Michele Linn, who oversees the content at CMI, including the videos they capture at CMW. She has been working with Eric since the first CMW event in 2011, and they are currently making plans for this year’s Content Marketing World event in September. One of the recommendations she has is to be as detailed with your planning as possible. “Last year, my goal was to capture a lot of video footage at CMW so we could use it throughout the year. While this seemed like a good idea in theory, it proved to be very difficult to manage. So, this year we are being very specific about what types of video we will capture and are placing specific deadlines for each piece. This helps both Eric and me plan much better.”

The solution: Have a plan, but be flexible. Even though plans are crucial, Michele stresses that it’s an evolving process. “It’s been enjoyable working with Eric because he’s been open to trying different formats. While the first year we captured short videos, we expanded into roundtables last year, which were longer-form pieces. These pieces performed well, and we’ll be focused on that format, as well as some new possibilities, this year.”

In addition to having a specific content plan about what videos to create and when they will be delivered, Michele also suggests transcribing all of the video footage so it can easily be edited. Even if you do not use all footage in video form, you can use it in text format or read it to be inspired with other ideas.

Share your story

Have success or horror stories from recording video at an event? We would love to hear about them in the comments.

Looking for a great opportunity to create event-based video content using the ideas in this post? Register today to attend Content Marketing World 2013.

1. Educational Graphics

Image via Flickr by VFS Digital Design

People love to learn, but they want their education in small, visual, bite-sized portions. Infographics are the ideal way to get lots of interesting facts and information into a small form and make it visually appealing to the viewer. Last year, we created an infographic on the massive amount of waste created by trade shows that garnered the company’s website over 12,000 visits and even got picked up on the National Geographic website. There are tons of infographics out there, but it’s easy to find an idea and create an infographic specific to your needs.

First, research the topic thoroughly and come up with a question or revelation no one’s touched on before. Then gather shocking facts, interesting tidbits, tips and tricks, or other information to present to the reader. Organize it in a visual way, using very little text, and let the pictures tell the story for you. There are entire Pinterest boards dedicated to infographics on all sorts of topics.

2. Informative Videos

Content creators love to use funny videos, but people are also interested in viewing and sharing informative videos. People want to learn how to do something, how something works, and what makes things tick. If you’re using video, make sure you’re keeping these key issues in mind:

• People will take you more seriously if the video is professional looking.
• Use the visual nature of video. Don’t create a talking head video that interests nobody.
• Create an interesting and unique title showing how your video is different from the rest.
• Deliver all the information you promise in your title, don’t leave viewers hanging.

Videos can range from 30 second spots to hour-long presentations. However, don’t produce a video longer than it takes to inform your viewers, or they will lose interest and won’t share it.

3. Inspiring Photos

People love to be inspired. That’s why we keep posters with eagles on our office walls, emblazoned with slogans like, “Rise to new heights.” However, they need photos to tell them a story, make them feel something, and help them grasp the message you’re trying to convey in order to share.

Ideal photos don’t have to be limited to endearing people, adorable animals, or spectacular sunrises. Think of other ways to inspire people, such as the scary images we see during war-time or natural disasters. Inspiration doesn’t have to be uplifting, it simply has to inspire someone to feel, and act, on the message.

4. Entertaining Articles

Not all content has to be visual to capture enough enthusiasm for a share. Well written content will make the reader laugh, cry, hurt, feel angry, get hopeful, or experience any other emotion you can imagine. Surprisingly, not just positive, happy-go-lucky content wins our likes and shares. Much successful content taps into negative emotions, such as fear, anger, or jealousy.

In order to entertain your audience, you need to make the content approachable. Use lots of subheadings to make the content easy to scan and keep paragraphs brief, not intimidating.

Done properly, all of these types of content spark what’s necessary to garner a share from your audience.

What other content ideas have worked for you?

However, the amount of content that you produce can have a significant impact on your return. Taking it as a given that the content is high quality and original (that should go without saying), the more content you produce, the better the results.

More content =

• Better visibility in search engines
• More social media reach
• More website visits

Check out these graphs

Impressions

The chart below compares the number of impressions (how many times the website showed up in search results) in March and April, pre and post an increase in content creation:

• 127% increase in impressions
• 93% increase in click-throughs
• 12% improvement in average rankings position

Rankings

The chart below shows the organic search engine rankings of a company, alongside their 4 biggest competitors, following an increase in content output:

Social Media Metrics

The chart below shows the impact on various metrics pre and post an increase in content creation:

Website Visits

The chart below shows the impact on website visits following an increase in content output:

Summary

No summary required: the facts speak for themselves.

25% of the average marketing budget is dedicated to custom content. But how much should quality content cost? The short answer is, enough to get the quality you need to reach your goals. The long answer is much more complex.

Despite the fact that 54% of marketers will be increasing their content budget in 2013, 52% believe they lack the budget to perform their job adequately. Ted Karczewski of Brafton has highlighted the fact that by all standard success measures, low-quality content won’t get your business anywhere.

It won’t help you rank high on Google, convert leads, or gain a bigger share of voice on social media. You’re far better off investing in 1 piece of content that engages your buyer personas than 6 pieces which fail to answer their real-life questions.

How Much Do Content Creators Cost?

Content marketing requires human effort, energy, and talent. There have been no technological advances to date which can emulate an experienced writer’s ability to engage readers through storytelling. Because the process of creating content is so human-driven, there’s no standardized industry measure to determine fair costs for content.

While most freelance writing rates are based on words written, not hours put in to a given project, the most-reliable data sources are on copywriters salary. In the aftermath of Google’s latest algorithm updates, it’s clear that quality content is the only way to win the arms war. While some digital influencers like Seth Godin can frequently write articles that are less than 200 words, it’s critical to remember that thhe’ve earned the right to be heard.

The US Bureau of Labor & Statistics (BLS) states the average copywriter salary is $55,420 per year, or $26.64 hourly. Eloqua reports that mid-sized companies should expect to spend around $150 per piece of content from freelancers. While an individual’s speed can vary significantly according to their subject matter expertise and experience, Osmosio has written that quality content can take between 4-6 hours. Assuming your company is using content between 1000 words per blog article as a simple unit of measurement, your average cost per word will be $0.13 using BLS data, and $0.15 by Eloqua’s estimates.

These measurements aren’t absolutes, but rather limited snapshots of costs in an industry that’s rapidly growing and changing. Lower-cost content isn’t always indicative of low-quality, and many highly-talented copywriters are willing to charge lower freelance writing rates if they’re highly familiar with the topic. There are sources that offer content at mere pennies per word, but low-quality content could end up costing your company less than you receive in return.

Factors Which Can – and Should – Affect the Cost of Your Content

Keep in mind that what constitutes quality and value in one industry isn’t sufficient in another. Not only does your copywriting need to be unique, it should be tailored to the expertise and sophistication levels of your buyer personas. The more research, statistics, and facts necessary to impress your prospects, the more you should expect to pay for content. Here are some factors that can drive a fair cost-per-word for your needs:

1. Are Graphics Needed?

Highly-complex topics are sometimes best illustrated with the help of charts and graphs. Even if you’re not in a technical field, it’s important to remember that 40% of the population processes images better than text. If you’re asking a freelancer to source or create images, it can affect pricing.

2. How Much Research Is Required?

While subject-matter experts will charge more on average, they’ll also result in more-authoritative content. Regardless of how technical your field is, it’s essential to hire copywriting services that can produce accurate and up-to-date information.

3. How Fast Do I Need It?

If you need your content quickly, it’s reasonable to assume that your costs will rise.

While content marketing is a relatively new field, the increasing need for high-quality content has lead to an increase in outsourcing. Mashable reports that 62% of companies are currently using freelance copywriting services. Investing in quality will position your company as a thought-leader, and allow you to soar to the top of Google.

How do you determine fair rates for freelance copywriting services? Please share your ideas in the comments below.

Your customers read your site to find what your business can provide them different than your competitors. Let your content reflect this condition by providing easy to find information and useful resources that satisfy your customers’ expectations. If your content distracts or confuses potential customers, they are more likely to leave your site and move on to one of your competitors. Let’s try to prevent that. Here are few of our favorite tools.

Nimble Social CRM

You may consider using a customer relationship management (CRM) software. CRM software is designed to collect all business processes related to customer relations, like: marketing, sales, and customer support, into a central solution.

One CRM solution to consider is Nimble Social CRM. This software is designed to make customer relations quick and dependable. It includes tools that maintain customer information, that make mass communication easier with email and other methods, and that monitor social media for your business. Social media is a powerful tool to help businesses grow. What your business maintains on its social media is content like any other that can help attract customers to your site.

You can also improve productivity by using mobile devices as well as the desktop. There are many different plugins designed for Nimble Social CRM that can help get your business moving towards fulfilling its needs.

Constant Contact

By letting your customers know when you have new content available, they have reason to return for continued business. A method of accomplishing this is a Constant Contact solution. Constant Contact is a service that provides different communication campaigns like email marketing, events, and online surveys.

Your business can mprove customer relations by using the services of Constant Contact. Online surveys and social media campaigns can let your customers give feedback on how your business is meeting their needs and where they would like you to focus.

Duct Tape Marketing

One way to have really great content is to use a consultant. They can review your site and provide their expertise on what changes you can make and on what techniques can benefit you. Which consultants should you consider? Duct Tape Marketing is a system developed by a small business owner designed to help small business owners. Here is the site describing what these certified consultants can offer your business.

A Duct Tape Marketing consultant would be glad to help your needs. The system is designed to help you find new leads and then to convert these into continuing customers. They care about your bottom line as much as you, and would like to show you all the tools available to grow your business.

As you take this journey to success, remember that your content makes your business. Your content should attract the customer yet be informative. Maintaining your content can be difficult alone, so considering a consultant is an investment worth considering. Also maintaining customer relations can be handled in a central solution by utilizing a customer relationship management software. Informing customers about new content encourages their return to your site for continued business.

The Unlicensed Content Model

The first and most popular option is to use unlicensed content from around the web.  In this model, the curator does not seek explicit permission from the content authors.  Instead the curator, keeping the fair use statute in mind, shares a small excerpt from the original text and clear attribution to the original article.  Readers of the curated content are then required to go back to the original publisher’s site to read the article in full.

The Licensed Content Model

The second model is to actually license the content from the original author and republish the original content in it’s entirety on the curator’s site. There are appealing properties of licensed content: (1) You get to provide a seamless reading experience. (2) You do not risk driving readers off your site. (3) You don’t have to worry about fair-use and how much content you take.

The Downsides of Curating Licensed Content

While the licensed content curation model is attractive on the outset, there are some obvious, and other not so apparent downsides, to building a curation destination on a licensed content model.

• Limited Selection. With licensed content, your sources for third party content are severely constrained.  You can only curate content from sources with whom you either have a direct publishing relationship or with whom your licensed content provider has a relationship.  Most re-sellers of licensed content have relationships only the largest mainstream publishers such as the Associated Presses and the Reuters of the world.

  As a result, for most content marketers focused on specific topics and niches, such as B2B marketers, who rely on specific trade publishers and blogs, licensed content is not an option.

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In order to avoid risking their original articles being confused as duplicate content, most publishers who license their content contractually obligate their licensees to include special directives in the syndicated content that forbid search engines from indexing the copies of the licensed content.  As a marketer, this means that if you use licensed content on your site, it will have little to no SEO value.

  For brands looking to simply engage their existing audience and provide a more seamless reading experience, licensed content may be an option. But most marketers are not only looking to engage with their existing audience, but grow their audience and readership through search engine traffic.  For the latter camp, licensed content is not a very compelling option.

• Privacy. Licensed content usually comes with the stipulation that you have to include a provided pixel tracker with any piece of licensed content you re-publish.  In turn, this pixel tracker can cookie your readership, measure the efficacy of the content, and provide analytics back to the original publisher.

  While this is not a salient issue with most marketers, it could be one for marketers in regulated industries with strict privacy policies, or marketers who are sharing licensed content to an internal audience (e.g. competitive intelligence teams).

• Modification & Editorialization. If you re-publish licensed content, you are typically required to republish the original in full with no modifications or edits so that you do not misrepresent or distort the views of the original publisher.

  As a result, some of the content curation best practices with regards to adding your own perspective, annotating content, and re-titling content to add value as a brand curator are difficult, at best, or out of reach, at worst, with licensed content.

• Cost. Lastly, we should not forget cost.  While unlicensed content is free, licensed content carries inexpensive fees that can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars a year based on your breadth of content.

Which one is right for you?

If you can afford it, don’t have a strong need to attract new visitors via search engines, and tend to find sufficient relevant content from mainstream publishers, then licensed content may be for you. From a reading experience perspective, there’s nothing better than providing the full original content and keeping visitors within your own site.

But for most marketers, unlicensed content is the easiest way for them to feed the content beast.  If you can curate ethically, unlicensed is content is free, ubiquitous, diverse and readily available.

Interested in getting started with content curation?  Download the 5 Simple Steps to Become a Content Curation Rockstar eBook.

This is a blog post about creation. Creating content that actually matters.

If you’re writing to increase conversion rates, then, yes, SEO matters. Proper grammar matters. Page layout matters. Verbal flourish might matter.

But those are all details – aspects of content writing that come only after you’ve answered the more fundamental questions. Whether you’re developing a content strategy for the first time or you’ve been writing to increase those conversion rates for years, it’s time to touch on some fundamentals.

Before whipping up that next blog post, ask yourself these seven questions, and start creating content that actually impacts your audience!

#1 Who are your target audiences?

Before creating anything that has the end goal of monetization/sales, it’s key that you know who your target audience is. You can’t sell if you don’t know the buyer. The nice thing about content writing, however, is that you can affordably custom-tailor it for multiple target audiences.

Content, in the grand scheme of things, is cheap. The cost of a great blog post is nowhere near the cost of a billboard, newspaper advertisement, or even a long-running PPC advertising campaign.

Determine your target audience (these questions can help), and then segment your leads. Next question…

#2 What is your target audience interested in? … aside from your product?

Your target audience has interests that go beyond what you sell. That’s a no-brainer, right? However, many marketing agencies and small business bloggers write to increase conversion rates as if readers only care about their product.

Not so. For high competition keywords, it’s especially important that you build out your content to grab the other interests your customers may have. Being self-focused 100% of the time is a major turn-off.

#3 How can you meet those interests?

Once you’ve created a list or audience profile of your customers’ interests, it’s time to find a way to meet those interests. Obviously, blog/content writing is not the only avenue available to you. Content marketing affords a host of reasonably priced options; even mobile apps are within reach for many small businesses and agencies.

#4 Why will they choose to listen to you?

Don’t just assume that because you’re able to meet your audience’s interests that they will choose to listen to you. The internet is no build-it-and-they-will-come merry-go-round. The first of Sonia Simone’s “10 Content Marketing Goals Worth Pursuing” is to build trust and rapport with your audience.

Use your content, as Simone advises, to bring down walls and give your audience a glimpse of what it would be like to work with you. When you’re authentic, your target audience will listen. Then, they’ll consciously decide to listen to you in the future.

#5 Where do you want the content to go?

Here we are on the fifth question, and you know your audience, you’re meeting their interests, and you’ve earned their trust. But where do you want things to go from here? Besides the obvious (sales), your content needs to be easy to share. If you want your content to actually matter, it has to get past the first layer of audience and before the eyes of a greater readership.

#6 What does your content ask the audience to do?

Lastly, your content should have a call to action. Not every call to action should be, “Buy my product!” Far from it. Your CTA may be a simple request that the reader engage in the comments section, or it might be that they take your advice and make changes in their life/business. The CTA is up to you; just make sure that you don’t publish a piece of content without one. Which brings us to…

#7 How will you incentivize that action?

If you’re going to ask someone to do something, you better provide some incentive. The strength and/or presence of the incentive can waver depending on how demanding the CTA is. A simple question at the end of a blog post doesn’t necessarily require incentivizing, while a share-this-with-three-friends-on-Facebook CTA should probably have some kind of incentive attached (e.g. giveaway prize, blog recognition, etc.).

Not sure what all this will actually look like on your blog? Check out seven approaches to blog/content writing for your next steps! What do you believe is an essential question to ask for creating content that matters?

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words, but rather short, easy words like ‘what about lunch?’” — Winnie the Pooh

Winnie may not qualify as a spokesman (spokesbear?) for ALL of the bears out there, but he definitely shares the

sentiments of the Web Content Bear.  After all, the web is so hungry for new content that it’s like a demanding bear that never gets full!

But the Web Content Bear won’t eat just any old thing.  Instead, he wants you to use simple, conversational, easy-to-relate-to language to get your points across.

So, what are the best ways to turn your business into an all-you-can-eat buffet for the Web Content Bear?

1.  Don’t just report news; analyze it

Your readers are counting on you to keep them up to date on developments in your niche.  But if you want to keep the Web Content Bear satisfied, you need to take things one step further.

For example, let’s say you’re an SEO professional who just published a blog post about all of Google’s big changes that are going to be taking place over the next few months.  Yes, that post counts as sharing the news with your audience, but there are tons of content ideas that stem from this one development.

Like what?

How about writing an article that analyzes how these changes are going to affect small businesses where one person does all of the web work?  How about sending out a newsletter to your list that explains what larger, content-heavy sites need to do to keep up with these changes?  How about posting a video that explains how new websites can get started off on the right foot by keeping these changes in mind?  How about devoting a series of blog posts to each question that comes into your inbox about these new changes?

Just like that, you’ve turned one piece of news into a handful of great content ideas.  Considering that most of your competitors will only write about the changes themselves and then call it a day, you can take things a step further and look like a true expert.  After all, the Web Content Bear loves feasting on expert information!

2.  Keep your blog posts short, sweet, and to the point

By narrowing your blog posts down to 200 or 300 words, you’ll be able to add new ones on a more frequent basis (meaning you’ll get more “bonus points” from Google for having fresh content on your website).  After all, those lengthier pieces take a whole lot of extra time to research, write, and proofread.  If you can cut down on that time, you can publish more!

Plus, there are probably a lot of developments in your niche that only merit a couple hundred words’ worth of discussion.  By publishing shorter posts, you can include a lot more — like the tidbits that may not require a formal article, but are just as important and interesting to your audience!

Just don’t confuse “short” with “short on information”.  (Stuff that’s short on information gives the Web Content Bear a serious case of indigestion!)  If done correctly, even short pieces of web content can teach readers a whole bunch of new things!

3.  Serve your content with a twist

You don’t have to be a bartender or Chubby Checker to make good use out of a twist!  If there’s a topic that everyone in your niche is talking about, think of a way to set yourself apart.  For example, interesting metaphors, humor, and even sarcasm can all be great ways to make your content different.  (To the Web Content Bear, this is like feasting on spicy Mexican food, instead of eating the same ol’ boiled chicken dish every day!)

4.  Make hashtags your friend

Want to know what your target audience is interested in?  Just head onto Twitter and search for different hashtags!

For example, if you’re in the health food niche, try searching for things like “antioxidants” or “superfoods”.  You may see all kinds of people using these words as hashtags — which can introduce you to a whole new crop of content topics.  As an added benefit, you’ll know how to tag your own posts for maximum exposure when you share a new article, blog post, or video on Twitter!

The Web Content Bear loves things like this.  After all, social media has become a huge part of content marketing.  It only makes sense that you would consult with your social networks before you create a “menu” for the Web Content Bear!

Just remember, all of these ideas won’t do you any good if you don’t think in terms of your readers!

If you want your readers to love what you’re saying, you’ve got to make sure that your topic and tone appeal to them!  If your target audience is made up of 30-something women, you’re going to use much different wording that you would if your target audience was made up of 60-something men.

Remember, the goal is to make your web content a personal experience.  If your readers don’t feel like you’re having a one-on-one conversation with them, you’re never going to see as much success as you should!

Or, as Winnie the Pooh says, “A little consideration, a little thought for others makes all the difference.”

1. Content Curation: Everyone Is Doing It

Research by Curata has found that curating isn’t a new or innovative practice any longer, it’s become the norm. Only 5% of the marketers worldwide surveyed in their annual report never share other organization’s content, while nearly ⅓ share blogs, industry publications, or other resources on a daily basis:

Image Credit: Curata

2. Curation Is Social

One of the most prominent trends in contemporary marketing is the convergence of content marketing and social media strategy; Marketo’s Head Strategist Jason Miller recently stated “this is the year where content and social will convene.” 76% of marketers share curated content on social media, the single biggest platform for distributing curated content. Communication between colleagues is critical to ensure that social media sharing matches the organization’s content strategy.

3. Social Sourcing

79% of marketers use social media to find content for their curation strategy, whereas only 63% rely on company newsletters and subscriptions. Developing a healthy social media presence is important to cast a wide enough net to find the right content. To truly gain attention for your content curation strategy, utilize hashtag searches and frequent monitoring to find information before it goes viral.

4. Curation Establishes Thought Leadership

Every company and marketer want to be known as the go-to source for information in their niche, and a healthy curation strategy can position a company as a thought leader. 85% of curators say establishing thought leadership is their main objective, a 6% increase over 2011. Not only is actively curating a valuable tool for establishing authority, it can help individuals build relationships with key bloggers and copanies.

5. Benefits of Curation Are Manifold

While authority is a primary draw for active content curation, 80% of marketers share 3rd-party content in order to improve company visibility and buzz. Positive SEO is a third benefit, particularly if content marketers share infographics and videos. Posts with video attract 300% more inbound links.

6. Finding the Right Content Is Tough

Consumers are living through what’s been described as “information obesity,” and brands with a critical approach to curation realize that sharing low-quality, mediocre, or old content won’t do their company any favors. Before you share an article, or embed a video, consider whether it’s relevant to your audience, and sufficiently high-quality to represent your organization. In fact, 30% of marketers report it’s harder to find quality information than it was in 2011.

7. Resources Rule

To combat the unique challenges of content curation, organizations are increasingly turning to official systems, processes, or resources to stay organized. Organizations must develop a system of internal communication and quality-checking before they publish 3rd-party information. Curata found that 78% of marketers are using at least one brand-wide resource to compile, and annotate links for content curation.

Image Credit: Curata

8. Search May not Be Enough

Web experts predict that in the future, the total information on the web could double every 72 hours. While Google, Bing, and other major search engines are actively working to improve their algorithms, expert Rohit Bhargava believes that search might not be sufficient to find the right insights in the future. Instead, content curators could develop dedicated followings as voices for the social web.

9. You Can’t Stop Once You Start

The best-known marketers, including Seth Godin and Chris Brogan, didn’t develop a reputation by intermittently blogging, or occasionally accepting speaking engagements. Content curation requires continual commitment to delivering breaking news, and distilling the noise around a given topic. Determine how curation fits into your organization’s content and social strategy, and stick to what you’ve started.

10. Your Community Is Key

If a company is producing the most brilliant content that no one is reading, will it still rank high in search? Unfortunately, probably not. Social signals are beginning to matter more than ever in SEO, which is why a content marketing strategy is only as strong as its community. Fishkin recommends actively networking with other content creators to develop planned curation, with an end goal of increasing your audience.

11. Different Forms of Curation

If you thought content curation was as simple as finding an amazing infographic, and sharing the link on Twitter, there are a number of recognized approaches to curating:

• Aggregation: the most-common form of curation, companies compile relevant information on a given topic into a single location.
• Distillation: Sharing only the best insights on a highly-popular topic, by embedding the best Tweets or quotations.
• Elevation: Drawing conclusions on trends or issues by analyzing social posts.
• Mashups: Blending original and curated content into a fresh, original take.
• Chronology: Developing a timeline of events, using links, social posts, and other curated media.

12. You Have to Refine and Improve

The worst kind of content curation strategy is a stagnant one. Building a Twitter list of thought leaders, or joining a few LinkedIn groups is fine and good, but you can’t call it a day. Curation Specialist Robert Scoble has stated that “if you want more followers, you have to follow better people.”

13. Google Cares Deeply about Authority

Google really loves thought leaders. As Authorship markup is becoming expected of bloggers, and rumors of AuthorRank abound, marketers who invest content curation to build strategy will likely end up ahead in the end. When asked how businesses were considered in search rankings, Google’s Matt Cutts declined to give a specific answer, instead recommending that individuals focus on “becoming an authority in your niche.”

14. There’s a Code of Ethics

If you thought the rules surrounding content curation resembled the Wild West, there’s a significant movement to establish widespread, professional ethics. While many have addressed the importance and etiquette of proper attribution, The Curator’s Code addresses common questions in-depth.

15. Curatorship Could Be the Future

As the concept of a filter becomes more important to consumers, the value of a curator soars. In fact, Bharati Ahuja of Search Engine Journal predicts that Google could even roll out Curator Markups in the future, as a recognized alternative to authorship.

64% of content creators struggle to produce enough quality information to establish an engaged audience. Boost your company’s visibility and reputation by incorporating content curation.

Are you currently curating content as part of your content marketing strategy? How often do you share 3rd-party content?

image courtesy of ClickMeeting.com

Consider webinar content – The first thing you need to focus on when planning a webinar is your content, as it’s your most important aspect and something you should consider thoughtfully to ensure it’s appealing. Although this may seem challenging, you’d be surprised by what people are interested in learning. Think about what your attendees should know, or want to know about your business, products or service. 
Here are some starting points to consider for your content:

• What do people need to know in order to get started with your product or service?
• What can you do to help people get past any obstacles they may have?
• 
What advice or tips can you offer?
• What are some frequently asked questions?
• Provide a demo of your services or programs.
• Create awareness for your business or organization.

If you’ve never hosted a webinar, pick a topic you’re comfortable with, as it’ll help you feel confident about your presentation. Also, consider having live questions and answers at the end of your webinar. Your attendees will appreciate the chance to ask questions and have them answered right away. Questions add value to any topic you pick, plus, they give great insight into how people interact with your products or services. And, you can pick and choose the questions that will be most helpful to your attendees.

Create a presentation – For most webinars, you’ll need to create an interesting and compelling presentation. We use PowerPoint at VerticalResponse to create ours, but there are a variety of options including, Google Docs, Prezi and Sliderocket. Most tools have an array of styles for the slides.

You obviously want your webinar presentation to be visually appealing, but try not to overwhelm viewers with too many images. A good rule of thumb is to use one image per slide with text, two-three if you’re showing something specific or making a point. If your presentation offers images for slide backgrounds, use them sparingly.

Also, as tempting as it is may be to add a lot of details to a slide, don’t. Add a couple of lines of text or use bullets to make your points. Speak about a topic or slide as much as you need to, but adding more text to a slide makes it harder for viewers to concentrate – They get caught up in reading everything you’ve added to the slides and miss what you’re actually saying. Let the bullet points show your main speaking points and then you can elaborate as you need to.

After your presentation is complete, you’ll want to do a few practice runs so you know how it flows, what your viewers will see, and what points you’ll need to say. It also helps to get someone else to proofread for typos and any errors.

Get the party started – Before you’re ready to get the webinar party started, keep in mind how it’ll be perceived by your attendees. All the prep work you’ve done will be for nothing if they can’t hear or view what’s going on:

• Log in early, (at least 15 minutes prior), to set up, trouble shoot any problems, and to let your attendees know you’re there.
• Find a quiet place to conduct your webinar. You don’t have to set up a sound booth, but find somewhere that has little outside noise, or people who could interrupt or distract from your presentation.
• Whether you use a microphone or phone, remember that every sound in the room will be picked up and become part of the webinar. So don’t rustle papers or do other loud things.
• Ask questions or do a survey during your webinar. Many webinar programs have this feature built in so that your viewers can interact and give feedback live, and you can share the results on the screen automatically.
• Have something to drink on hand; a glass of water, coffee, tea or even wine, whatever you prefer. Webinars are a talky business and you’ll want something to sip on to keep you hydrated.

Follow-up – Once you reach the end of your webinar, it’s not all over. Send out a follow-up email to close the circle. Some webinar hosting services will automatically send follow-up emails, which is handy, but you’ll want to edit the message to give it your own voice and include any important info including a link to the recorded version of the webinar, if there is one. You may want to create separate emails for attendees and non-attendees, offer different content and links and check your stats to see if you get different engagement.

Consider sending out a few emails to encourage sales from your customers, or help convert the leads you generated by hosting the webinar. If your webinar service doesn’t send out a follow up email, you can easily create one yourself (and VerticalResponse can certainly help you with that). Simply download a list of all attendees and registrants from the hosting service, then upload to your email service provider and send out a follow up.

Now that we’ve unlocked these 4 tips, your webinar will be a success! Knowing your topic and practicing your webinar beforehand will give you the confidence you need if you’re feeling a little nervous. And, if that doesn’t help, remember it’s just you in the room talking – You can’t see your audience, and they can’t see you, just pretend they aren’t even there and relax. For more webinar tips, check out our post, Be the Webinar Host with the Most.

Do you use webinars for your business? What tips would you add to this list?

At SPROUT Content, we work with many B2B companies and most of them have either a one-person marketing team in-house or someone else in the company such as the President or business owner who handles all of the marketing decisions. That is a lot for one person to do alone, and while we all like to think of ourselves as superheroes, an effective content marketing strategy cannot be executed and maintained by an army of one.

A content marketing agency can be your in-house marketing team and complement the one you have, extending your resources and saving you time to focus on other things.   Here are some other ways that a B2B company can benefit from working with a content marketing agency.

Telling Your Story

If we’ve heard this one, we have heard it 100 times. “We don’t really have an interesting story.”  No matter what industry you are in, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Not telling your story is a big reason that many B2B small businesses come across as boring, functional, impersonal and pretty similar.

B2B business owners often don’t see their story as interesting or worth telling.  If that were the case, they wouldn’t be in business very long… or at all. The problem is not that they don’t have a story, but they just don’t get what their story is or how they should be telling it.

A content marketing agency can help you develop a content marketing strategy that helps you connect to your audience and think about things from their perspective. You have to explain how your business can solve their problems and make their lives easier, person-to-person, not just abstract “Business to business.”

If you’re selling a traditionally “boring” product or service (think accounting or manufacturing), words can actually paint an exciting and interesting picture of your business and show how you will help or improve the lives of your customers.  The right words can carve out your unique space and make a memorable connection with people.

Companies who don’t think of themselves as a brand with a distinct reason for being, compelling points of difference, and an entity with a voice and personality, will never effectively tell their story.  If you are in business, you have a story to tell.  Check out how a paper converting company transformed their business by learning to tell their story through content marketing.

Producing Enough Content

The 2013 CMI study on B2B Small Business Content Marketing revealed that producing enough content is the biggest challenge for B2B marketers. B2B companies are gradually understanding the impact that content marketing can have on their business, and increasing their budgets for blogging, lead generation downloads, videos, whitepapers, webinars, microsites and other types of content. But keeping up with all of that content development can certainly be a difficult for small B2B teams.  A content marketing partner can not only help you develop a strategy to help you determine the types of content you should be creating to reach your audience, but create content in your voice that speaks to your audience.

A content marketing agency can also help you discover the expert resources you have right in your own company.   The people who are in your company, working on the “front lines” in sales, customer service, production and product development are the ones that hear what people want first hand and know your services inside and out.  A content marketing partner will find those gems in-house and help transform your company into a publishing powerhouse.

If you’re curious about how other B2B companies are creating great content, check out this roundup from HubSpot on 10 B2B companies that are creating exceptional content.  If you want to know more about how you can become one of them, we’d love to help you grow your business through content marketing.